


Line of Succession

by doyouhearthunder



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Gen, also this isn't really a Tim/Jessica fic, bc I headcanon Tim as aromantic and Jessica's not that interested anyways, like canon MH though there's room for interpretation if you want them to have a Thing, post-canon continuation fic whooo!, the usual MH stuff applies in re trigger warnings btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-11 22:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10475559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doyouhearthunder/pseuds/doyouhearthunder
Summary: One year after Entry #87, Tim is settling into a newfound normality, while Jessica struggles to retain hers.  But someone else out there has designs for both of them.  As their fates are put back into a collision course, they learn that the past isn't done with them yet, nor they with it.  There are things left unfinished, and the long loop of their lives is closing back in on itself...





	1. Deterioration

It had been a bad week for Jessica Locke.  
  
            The headaches had been getting worse, and she’d been having trouble sleeping.  When she did sleep, she had nightmares; dreams of being a little kid again, playing in the woods.  She was alone, exploring among the trees, when the sun went down, unnaturally fast, within seconds, and then she was running, running down endless trails through the dark, a sea of trees looming out at her in new, threatening ways, until one tree blocked her path, different from the others, except it wasn’t a tree at all, it was a man, or something like a man, and she tried to get away but every direction she turned, the figure was there in front of her, dark and tall and-  
  
            Awake again, head pounding.  Every night the same dream.  
  
  
On this particular night she awoke with her heart pounding, drenched in sweat, but her fear was quickly replaced with frustration as she came back to awareness of reality.  That dream might have been recurring, but she wasn’t getting used to it; every time it happened her body reacted as if the dream was real, and it took her a few minutes to calm down afterward.  She rolled over, checking the digital clock by her bed.  The display, its red numbers faintly glowing in the darkness, read 4:44 AM.  Jessica groaned, and had to fight down the urge in her throat to start coughing.  
  
            As if the nightmares and the migraines weren’t bad enough, she’d been having coughing fits.  Her doctor had put her on a new prescription, but it hadn’t been helping much.  In fact, she had just been getting worse.  Her throat was raw and hoarse from the coughing, and though she’d been consuming copious amounts of honeyed tea, it still hurt to swallow.  She had a suspicion that her doctor didn’t know what was ailing her any more than she did; he had been unable to provide a concrete diagnosis, making the new pills seem more like a shot in the dark than a legitimate treatment.  What was worse, her ability to function had become impaired enough that she’d had to take several days off work, and with no sign of improvement in her symptoms, she was becoming seriously worried about how she’d make next month’s rent.  She made enough, under normal circumstances, to afford a modest, solitary existence in a little one-bedroom apartment, but that meant she lacked a roommate whom she could fall back on for support if something happened.  
  
            That thought sent a familiar ache of sadness through her.  She missed Amy, her old roommate who had become the best friend she’d ever had.  It had been years since Amy and Jessica had lived together.  Years since Amy had disappeared without a trace.  Jessica didn’t like thinking about it, so of course she couldn’t help but do exactly that.  Not a day went by that she didn’t pray that Amy was still alive somewhere and safe.  She had just vanished one day, leaving everything behind, and no one had any clue what had happened to her, not even Amy’s boyfriend Alex.  Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard from Alex Kralie in a long time, either.  The last time she had seen him had been…she racked her brain, but thinking about Alex just made her head hurt even worse.  It was as if there was a thought or a memory just out of reach, hidden behind some impenetrable fog in her mind.  The harder she tried to think of it, the further away it seemed.  Jessica had experienced this feeling intermittently for years now, and it troubled her.  She felt like there was something very important just outside the boundaries of her memory, and she wasn’t sure if the feeling could be believed or if she was just imagining it.  
  
            Giving up on grappling with that puzzle for the moment, Jessica found her thoughts turning instead to the one person who might know what was happening to her.  She remembered how concerned Tim had been for her wellbeing the last time she’d seen him (he’d asked twice if she was doing okay), and how bad his own condition had been at the time, how he’d ended up coughing his lungs out on hands and knees in the doctor’s office parking lot.  He had insisted that he was fine, however, and after a few moments the coughing had subsided, and he’d retreated to his car.  In hindsight, Jessica realized, the coughing fits she’d begun experiencing recently were similar to what she’d witnessed with Tim that day.  
  
            That had been around a year ago, and she hadn’t seen Tim since then, though she’d received a few phone calls (perfunctory affairs, asking in broad terms how she was doing and providing little in the way of details about Tim’s own situation; Jessica had gotten the vaguely frustrating impression of a parent calling the babysitter during their night out to check in and make sure their child had not burned the house down or been stricken with a sudden illness in their absence).  After a while the frequency of those calls had declined, and it had been several months since she’d last heard from him.  He never told her why he left town or if he was ever coming back.  She wondered where he was and if he was okay.  
  
            Jessica realized that she didn’t even know Tim that well, and would probably never have met him in the first place had it not been for the mutual doctor that they shared, but he had always been kind to her when they had interacted.  Almost weirdly so, in fact, to the point where at first Jessica had assumed that he had ulterior motives (she generally wanted to believe the best in people upon first meeting them, but she’d had far too many disappointments from men in that regard not to be wary).  But she had warmed to him over time and repeated encounters, as his interest in her had seemed to come from a place of genuine desire to help.  He had given her tips on how to handle the side-effects of the medication they both took, even told her a little bit about how he was taking care of his friend Jay who apparently was sickly and needed someone to look after him.  Tim had always been a bit evasive, deflecting questions about himself with vague, simple non-answers, but she had felt like she could trust him.  He seemed to understand her in a way that she didn’t quite understand herself.  If there are things he’s not comfortable talking about, Jessica had reasoned, that’s his business.  She wasn’t going to pry.  
  
            Her train of thought was interrupted by another spasm of coughing.  She groaned and sat up a little, sipping from the cup of water on her bedside table.  Maybe it was the illness, or maybe it was the muggy Alabama weather (it was only mid-June, and already threatening to hit 90°F), but Jessica was beginning to feel overheated, so she got out of bed just long enough to raise the blinds and open her bedroom window a crack, letting in some cool night air from the street outside.  Clambering back into bed, she tried to clear her mind of the thoughts bouncing around her skull, keeping her brain active.  Trying to focus on how tired she was, instead of how miserable she felt, Jessica rolled over onto her side, coughed again, and slowly allowed herself to succumb to exhaustion and fall into an uneasy sleep.  
  
  
In her slumber, she never saw the figure approach outside, a dark shape blotting out the moonlight through the blinds.  Nor did she notice the camera it held observing her through the open crack in the window, recording her fitful tossing and turning in her bed, a thin mesh screen all that stood between her and its gaze.  
  
            As the emotionless, mechanical eye of the camera regarded her, Jessica dreamed an all-too-familiar dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Line of Succession! I have come to feed my fellow content-starved MH fans with a longer and more ambitious story than any I've written in the past. I have the whole thing written out in advance, so I should be able to stick to a consistent uploading schedule for new chapters (more regular than MH's entry releases back in the day, that's for sure).
> 
> A big part of my motivation for writing this was to practice my long-form storytelling skills, so feedback is very much welcomed! Let me know what you liked (and what you maybe didn't)!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for more!


	2. Revival

It had been a rough year for Tim Wright.  Which is to say, a definite improvement upon the previous one.  After a year where you lose the only good friend you’ve had since college at the hands of another man you once counted as a friend, whom you are then forced to kill in self-defense, well – there’s really nowhere to go from there but up.  Or more accurately, in Tim’s case, there’s really nowhere to go from there at all.  
  
            Tim’s existence since then had been a nomadic one, like a migratory animal without a destination.  He’d hit the road with little to his name, charting an aimless course through the neighboring states, never staying in the same place long enough to settle.  Wherever he went he found enough short-term odd jobs through temp agencies and help wanted ads to keep gas in his tank and food (albeit nothing fancy, nor particularly nutritious) in his stomach.  He stayed in cheap motels, but never in the same one for more than a week at a time, and sometimes, when money was low, he’d sleep in the back of his car.  It wasn’t an easy living by any means, but he had a good reason why he couldn’t settle down in one place, or hold a steady job, or make new friends and maintain relationships: he was infected.  
  
            There was a lot that Alex Kralie had been wrong about (most notably his stubborn conviction that the nuclear option of killing all his friends was the only solution; the concept was so extreme that Tim had long suspected that it hadn’t been entirely Alex’s own idea in the first place), but there was one thing that he’d been at least partially right about: Tim’s level of culpability in the disintegration of their lives.  He hadn’t intended to, he certainly hadn’t ever asked for any of it, but he had led something evil directly to his friends, and Jay, Brian, Alex and the others would all certainly still be alive and normal if they had never met him.  Tim was determined never to let that happen again, even if that meant never again letting anyone else into his life.  Fortunately, he was nothing if not self-reliant.  
  
  
Tim eased his car into the parking lot of his latest temporary home, a tiny but cheap motel in Kentucky, the fifth state in the slow half-circle he’d meandered through since leaving Alabama (he wasn’t running, exactly, he’d told himself; more like wandering).  He’d just earned a fairly generous sum of cash for helping an old lady with some yard work (thank you, Craigslist) and stocked up on some more non-perishable food items for the motel and the road, and he was ready to call it a day and rest his weary legs.  He stopped by the front office to extend his stay for another night (eating up the remainder of the day’s earnings in the process), and then headed to room #4 for some well-earned relaxation.  
  
             Relaxation, of course, was a luxury Tim hadn’t had much experience with in the past few years, but to his credit he’d finally stopped compulsively checking the window at night the way he used to, peering through the blinds and scanning the darkness outside for any hint of lurking figures watching him.  These days things were pretty normal, and he’d been able to stop glancing back over his shoulder all the time and focus on doing what he did best: getting by.  
  
  
Motel wi-fi and an old laptop that had once been Jay’s were about his only connection to the broader world at large, and he booted up the computer now as he settled into his little motel room for the rest of the day.  Tim didn’t exactly need the Internet for much; he’d never been one to go in for cat videos, and maintaining an active presence on social media websites was largely unnecessary when you had virtually no remaining friends left alive.  But it was helpful as a tool for planning his days; what town to head for next, how long it would take to get there and what motels and job prospects to look for upon arrival, etc.  As the aging machine clunked and whirred its way to life, he turned on the motel room TV, mostly just to fill the silence in the room (and partly, though it had become so routine that he barely thought about it, as a digital early warning system – just in case).  It was tuned to a local weather station, and he idly listened to the forecast for the coming days (the general trend seemed to be hot and dry; the forecaster was saying something about “record-setting temperatures” while avoiding the term “climate change”).  The laptop had just finished booting up when Tim’s attention was caught by something the forecaster said: “- highs getting up to the mid-90s tomorrow.  Again, that’s highs in the mid-90s for tomorrow, Sunday June 21st.”  
  
            June 21st.  Why did that date sound so familiar?  And then it hit him; that meant that today was the 20th.  And that meant...had it been a year already?  He hadn’t touched the Marble Hornets channel since leaving, hadn’t looked at the videos at all.  He’d put it all behind him, and it wasn’t a time in his life that he felt much fond nostalgia for, but…well, there’s something about anniversaries to make you realize how strange a thing the passage of time is, and Tim’s days since then had been largely empty, lonely affairs.  As much horror and pain as those videos contained, the MH channel was also the only existing record of the one bright spot in his life during those years.  The only place he could turn to for proof that he’d had a close friend once, that Jay had been real and alive.  Maybe he would take a look, just briefly, for old time’s sake.  
  
            No sooner had the page loaded on his laptop than Tim’s heart skipped a beat.  
  
            There was a video, after Entry #87, that he’d never seen before; the thumbnail was an unfamiliar green blur, like night vision on a camera, and the title simply, horrifyingly read “COME BACK.”  But more than anything else, his attention was held by the little line of text that read “2 hours ago.”  
  
            The TV was still on in the background, but Tim’s ears didn’t register a single sound from it.  His heart was pounding and his stomach lurched as he stared wide-eyed at the unknown video, sitting innocuously on the channel like a sinister invitation.  No no no no no, this couldn’t be happening, not again, it wasn’t possible.  He rubbed his eyes, blinked, and looked again, but the mystery video was still sitting there on the screen, waiting for him.  It had already racked up several thousand views, but he knew, somehow, that it was meant for his eyes.  He felt a creeping, panicked roaring filling his mind, causing his head to throb, and he stumbled to the bathroom sink, reaching for the medication bottle he’d left there.  He quickly opened it and dry-swallowed a pill, almost choking on it in his haste.  Before he’d left Alabama he’d purchased a bulk order of his medication from his pharmacy, and a year later he still had a couple full bottles left.  This was in large part because he’d cut his dosage back to one a day for maintenance; without anything exacerbating his symptoms, he hadn’t needed more than that to get by on.  If he ran into trouble again, however, that remaining amount might not last too long…  
  
            The throbbing in his head was subsiding now, and he was able to calm down enough to pull himself together and take stock of the facts.  Someone had posted a video to the Marble Hornets channel.  He knew that it wasn’t him who had done so; he’d been stable lately, there were no gaps of missing time unaccounted for in his memory.  The only other person who knew the password for the account was Jay, and Jay had been dead for about a year and a half now.  He remembered, however, that on a few occasions totheark had hacked into Jay’s account and uploaded videos on the channel.  But totheark…Brian, was also dead.  Tim was as certain of that as he was of anything; after all, he’d caused the fall that had killed him, had seen Brian’s broken body on the floor where it landed.  Alex had used the corpse as a prop to taunt him with, had asked him how it felt to have killed one of his friends…the point, Tim thought, was that everyone involved with Marble Hornets was gone; everyone except himself and Jessica.  
  
            Jessica…when was the last time he’d checked on her?  Longer than he’d intended, he knew that much.  He didn’t even own a cell phone anymore; or rather, to save money he’d replaced his old one with a TracFone with limited pre-paid minutes, as a cheaper alternative to expensive monthly payments to a phone provider.  He only needed a phone for emergencies and for getting in touch with people about work opportunities anyways.  Still, he should have called Jessica more often.  
  
            He moved back to the laptop.  The video was still waiting for him, luring him in with its mystery.  He checked the totheark channel as well, but there was nothing there.  Whoever had broken into the MH channel to post this had wanted it to be noticed.  He knew he should watch it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that, like with those first tapes of Alex’s that Jay had unburied from his closet so many years ago, if he succumbed to curiosity he would never be able to go back, and that thought frightened Tim to his core.  He’d spent so long trying to put all this behind him, only for some unknown person with some bullshit mystery video to come along and try to drag him back into it?  It felt like a violation somehow, to take over that channel that had belonged to him and Jay; that was a museum of their time together and had been, in a way, Jay’s life’s work.  Chances were it was just some disturbed “fan” of Marble Hornets trying to do their best totheark impression, one of the thousands of subscribers, who assumed the whole thing was some kind of made-up game, now abandoned, that they could hack into and hijack.  The thought emboldened him, and his anger overcame his fear, and he clicked on the link.  
  
  
The video started out with several seconds of darkness, punctuated with faint, eerie noises, like illegible, heavily distorted whispers.  Then an image flickered onto the screen, twigs and leaves on a forest floor, tinted green with the camera’s night vision.  There were shuffling noises, like something disturbing the blanket of twigs and leaves off-screen, and then the camera moved upwards, picked up off of the ground, rising to reveal the thick, dark branches of the trees looming above, covering the sky.  Then this image cut out to a blank, black screen, and text appeared.  The text was similar to the pixilated font that totheark had favored in his videos, but not quite the same, and it read “WAKE UP.”  Then it was replaced with another image, still in night-vision green, of what looked like the side of an apartment building, the wall on street level getting closer as the cameraperson approached a window.  The window was raised open, the glass too high for any glimpse of a reflection that might betray the identity of the person filming.  They put their camera right up to the screen of the window, and then the focus auto-adjusted, and the room inside came into view.  Tim’s chest tightened as he held his breath.  
  
            Even in the blurry green night-vision, he recognized the sleeping figure in the bed inside; a girl, with long dark hair.  Jessica was tossing and turning in her sleep, and then she started coughing, a long, loud cough that, as tinny and distorted as the sound was on the camera, was intimately familiar to Tim (was it his imagination, or did he feel a tickle in his throat just at the sound of it?).  Jessica seemed to have woken herself up from the coughing fit, and as her figure was doubled over, trying to breath, the distorted noise of her coughing grew louder, and a sinister hum began to build underneath it.  Quickly, the camera’s gaze whipped around and the person filming ran, away from the window and into the darkness of the night as the recorded image froze, stuttered and went out.  
  
            As the camera had turned, something in the motion blur had caught Tim’s eye for a second, and he skipped the video back to that moment, heart in his mouth, hoping against hope that it had been nothing more than a trick of the light.  It took several frustrating attempts to pause the video at just the right split-second, but finally he managed it, and his worst fears were confirmed.  Under a tree across the street from Jessica’s apartment, in the blur of the camera’s sudden movement, could be discerned a round, pale oval, affixed to the top of a humanoid, impossibly tall black shape.  
  
            The pulsing in Tim’s head was returning and the world around him seemed faint and far away, his eyes locked on the screen, as he let the video continue on to its last few seconds, and its final message: “COME BACK.  SHE NEEDS YOU.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's where it starts to get interesting...
> 
> Stay tuned for more soon!


	3. Reconnection

On the afternoon of June 21st, Jessica received a text that read “youtube.com/marblehornets” from a number she didn’t recognize.  She ignored it, of course.  She knew better than to mess with weird URLs in spammy-looking texts from unknown numbers.  That was how you got viruses.  There was something about that phrase that seemed familiar, though, that prodded the foggy part of her memory.  But then the nurse called her name, and she stood up from the waiting room chair and went in to see her doctor, and put it out of her mind.  
  
            She explained to Dr. Haight that yes, she had been taking the medication he had prescribed, and no, it hadn’t helped, and yes, the same symptoms as before, and no, actually they had only gotten worse.  That last point was dramatically underlined by another spasm of coughing; a deep, dry chest cough that started in her lungs and forced its way up her throat until it ran its course and left her gasping.  Her head was pounding.  Her doctor was quite concerned, but seemed at a loss for what to do.  That antibiotic he had prescribed her, he said, usually did the trick.  It was exceedingly rare, he explained, for symptoms like hers to continue completely unabated despite receiving treatment.  Jessica rubbed her temples, partly in pain from the headache and partly in frustration.  Dr. Haight was as nice and well-meaning a man as you could hope to meet, but he was proving to be rather useless; bewilderment is not generally what one looks for in a doctor.  He gave her a doctor’s note for her employers, strongly recommending that they allow her continued sick leave from her job, and told her to go home and continue to rest, get lots of sleep and drink lots of water ( _I don’t need a doctor to tell me that_ , Jessica thought in frustration, but she held her tongue).  Additionally, he instructed her to check in with him again in a few days, and warned her that if her symptoms got any worse in the interval, she might require hospitalization.  Jessica didn’t like the thought of that at all, and she left feeling more frustrated and despondent than before, and in no less discomfort.  
  


On her way home she swung by the coffee shop where she worked to give them the doctor’s note.  Her supervisor pursed her lips as she read it, but all it took was one look at Jessica (her skin pale, large dark circles from lack of sleep forming under her bloodshot, watery eyes) to see that she was in no condition to work.  
  
            “No, no, it’s alright, you take all the time you need to feel better.  Gloria can keep covering your shifts for you, she’s been asking for more hours anyways.”  
  
            Jessica thought she detected some subtext to the way her supervisor said that, an undercurrent of “maybe if you’re ready to come back to work soon enough you’ll still have a job when you do,” and it made her bristle a little; it wasn’t her fault that she’d come down with Hell-Flu or whatever it was that she had.  But she was too exhausted to belabor the point, so she politely expressed her thanks and hurried outside before another coughing fit that she could feel building in her lungs could take hold.   
  
            It caught up with her as soon as she got back in her car.  As she was doubled over clutching the steering wheel and coughing up a lung, her phone chimed again.  When she checked it, there was another text from that same unknown number.  It read simply “Watch and you will learn.”  She had no idea what it was talking about, or how whoever the hell it was had gotten her number, but she didn’t really care.  She was too tired to care.  If she got any more weird texts, she told herself, she’d just block the number.  Then, taking a moment to catch her breath, she turned the key in the ignition and turned her car towards home.  
  


Jessica entered her apartment with no plans or motivations for the remainder of the day other than collapsing into bed and lying there face down for the foreseeable future.  No sooner had she completed the first step of that plan, however, her phone rang.  She groaned, rolled over onto her back and reached for her purse, fishing around in it until she felt her phone under her fingers.  She pulled it out and looked at the screen.  The incoming call was from an unknown number, but a different number than the one that had been texting her.  For a moment she considered letting it go to voicemail, which would have been her usual response, but curiosity overcame her, and she swiped the screen to answer.  
  
            “This is Jessica Locke,” she said, her voice hoarse and raspy from the strain of her cough.  
  
            “Jessica!” said a familiar voice on the phone.  “Hi!  It’s, uh, it’s Tim.  Tim Wright.”  
  
            She sat up straight.  “Tim?  Oh my god, I haven’t heard from you in months?  How are you doing, where even are y-“  
  
            “Listen,” Tim cut her off.  From the background noise on the line, it sounded like he was driving.  “Sorry, listen, I don’t have good signal out here, gotta be brief.  I’m coming back.”  
  
            “You’re what?”  
  
            “I’m coming back.  To town.  I need to see you.  Something’s happened.”  
  
            “Tim, what?  What’s happened, what are you talking about?”  
  
            “Listen, are you home right now?”  
  
            “Uh, yeah.  Yeah, I am.”  
  
            “Good.  Stay there.  Keep the doors and windows locked.  Do you have a camera?”  
  
            “Do I have a - what, no, I don’t have a camera.  Tim, _what_ is going on?”  
  
            “I’ll explain everything when I get there.  What’s the address?”  
  
            Jessica hesitated, but only for a moment, and then told him the address.  
  
            “Great.  Thank you.  Got a bit of a long drive still, but I should be there by tomorrow morning, okay?”  
  
            “Tim, is everything okay?  You’re kinda scaring me,” she said, but as the words left her lips the sound on the other line cut out, and the call was lost.  
  
            Jessica was left sitting in the sudden silence, staring at her phone and trying to wrap her tired mind around the conversation that had just taken place.  The way Tim had sounded rushed, almost frantic.  The excitement, bordering on relief that had tinged his voice when she first answered.  The fact that he was returning, after a year, because “something” had “happened,” and it had something to do with her?  And why did he ask if she owned a camera?  She had no idea.  Tim had always been a bit mysterious, but this was a whole different level of strange.  She supposed she would find out when he arrived.  For a moment she wondered if she had made a mistake giving out her address like that.  But then, he didn’t sound crazy.  More like he knew something that she didn’t, something important.  And she had just been thinking about him the prior night…  
  
            Her phone gave off another chiming text notification sound, making her jump.  “That’s it, spam texter,” she grumbled to herself.  “You’re getting blocked.”  
  
            But when she opened the text, she froze.  It read “Watch the videos, Jessica.”  
  
            Uncertain what else to do, she texted back: “Who is this?”  
  
            A moment later, a response came in: “Marble Hornets.  Watch the videos.”  
  
            There was that phrase again, tickling the recesses of her mind like an itch in a spot she couldn’t get at.  There was a sense of dread climbing up her spine like a spider.  She texted back again: “Why?”  
  
            “There are things you should know.”  
  
            “Who are you?”  
  
            “There are things you’ve forgotten, Jessica.”  
  
            “What things?  How do you know my name??”  
  
            “Seek the answers in the entries.”  
  
            “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t block this number and forget this ever happened and ignore your stupid little prank or whatever it is entirely?”  
  
            She waited for a moment, a pause in the quick rhythm of the conversation, and then the reply came in.  
  
            “You want to know why you’re sick.  You want to know what your nightmares mean.  You want to know where Amy is.”  
  
            That stopped her in her tracks.  She didn’t know who she was talking to or how they knew her name, or that she was sick, or anything about her, really, and the not knowing frightened her.  But whoever it was, they were right.  She was tired of stumbling around in the dark, feeling like something had gone wrong when she wasn’t looking.  She was tired of feeling like her life was slipping out of her control.  And above all else, she missed Amy; there was a void in her normal, happy life that had been created when Amy had vanished, and even if her friend was never coming back, Jessica needed something, anything, to fill that gap in her place.  She needed answers.  She needed to know.  
  
            Tim’s words echoed back into her brain, giving her pause: “Keep the doors and windows locked.  Something’s happened.”  She shuddered, feeling suddenly chilled inside her apartment despite the warm June weather.  She got up, checked the locks on the front door and all the windows, and closed the blinds before grabbing her laptop and returning to her bed.   
  
            The sun began its slow curve downwards in the sky as Jessica opened the web browser and typed “youtube.com/marblehornets” into the address bar.


	4. Return

Tim drove into the night, alone but for his thoughts and the highway.  He normally found driving relaxing; a chance to let hours blur together as the endless and unchanging road passed him by.  Sometimes he listened to the radio.  Sometimes he just enjoyed the silence and the sensation of constant forwards movement, the seconds and minutes and hours putting more distance between himself and everything he’d put behind him.  
  
            But tonight he was doing the opposite.  He was moving backwards, turning his point of origin into his newest destination, closing the long and aimless circle he had begun a year ago.  He had never expected to return, but now he was beginning to realize that he had been ignoring the inevitability of it.  He could have driven anywhere and it wouldn’t have mattered; he would always have found himself here. Everything closes back in on itself eventually.  Eventually, everything repeats.  Caught in a loop…  
  
            As if to prove the point, his thoughts wandered circularly back to a familiar phrase, unheard for years.  He would have laughed at the realization, had he not been so out of practice.  Here he was, returning after a period of time away to a town he’d once called home, adrift with no certain plans for his future.  Now where had he heard that story before?  But of course, this was real life, not some poorly-acted student film.  For all the oddly prescient aspects of Alex’s god-awful script, there were things that he could never have predicted.  Truth, in Tim’s experience, had definitely been stranger than fiction, and the town he was returning to had far more than memories haunting it.  Not that it didn’t have plenty of those, too.  
  
            It wasn’t as if he even knew Jessica that well.  He’d just made a little bit of a promise to look out for her, that’s all.  Even then, that wasn’t so much because of Jessica herself; she was a perfectly nice girl, and a victim of circumstance who didn’t deserve to be tangled up in any of this, but if Tim was being honest with himself, he wouldn’t be going so far out of his way to help just anyone.  Callous as it may sound to admit it, his concern for Jessica’s wellbeing was primarily based in one factor: if he let any harm befall her, Jay’s ghost would probably return from beyond the grave to murder him.  Jessica’s involvement with Marble Hornets, her exposure to it and any negative consequences therein, had been Jay’s fault, and he had known it.  Or rather, he had subconsciously felt guilty and had channeled that guilt into an obsession with finding her, long past the point where any reasonable person might have concluded that she was no longer findable.  The fact that Tim _had_ found her, and had concealed that knowledge from Jay for Jessica’s own protection, was something he’d been left to live with long after Jay was gone.  For all Jay’s good intentions, he would only have led trouble right to Jessica’s doorstep had he known where to find her.  Tim had meant to tell him, eventually, if ever the danger had passed.  But that wasn’t how things had gone, and so Jay had died not knowing that Jessica was alive and well.  If Tim stood by and did nothing to help her now, when that “alive and well” part appeared to be in jeopardy, he’d never be able to live with himself.  
  
            The troubling thing, he pondered, was that whoever had posted that video seemed to know this.  If someone wanted to set a trap for Tim Wright, Jessica would be the best available relationship of his to exploit as bait (not that there were many other ones to choose from).  But did that indicate an understanding of him beyond what could be gleaned from the entries, or did they merely extrapolate his concern for Jessica from what he’d shown the world in Entry #87?  It was possible, of course, that it was no trap at all, that the mystery uploader’s motivations were not malicious, that they were merely warning him about a threat to Jessica, instead of posing one.  But Tim doubted it; life had not trained him to be trusting, and anyways there just wasn’t enough to go in on the video to be certain.  Whoever it was, they had picked up totheark’s penchant for ominous ambiguity, and it did not project an air of trustworthiness.  
  
            Tim hated mysteries, but the unknown cameraperson and their identity wasn’t what troubled him most; people didn’t scare him much anymore.  What scared him was the thing he’d glimpsed in the blurry frames of that video, the thing that he’d begun to think he had put behind him for good.  His old constant childhood companion, the progenitor of all his life’s misery.  He knew how to guard himself against it now, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous.  He was afraid of what it could do to his mind, what it might already be doing to Jessica’s.  He was afraid that if he let it catch his scent again, this time he might never be rid of it.  But that was a risk he was going to have to take, because he had no doubt that if left unchecked, it would consume Jessica completely; her mind, her soul, and eventually maybe even her life.  He wouldn’t let that happen to another friend.  Not again.  
  
  
He drove until he couldn’t drive any longer, until it became hard to keep his eyes open and he judged it unsafe to continue, and then he pulled into the next rest stop.  Tim didn’t exactly enjoy sleeping in his car, but he’d gotten adept at it over time.  It was getting late, and the place was sparsely populated.  He knew, rationally speaking, that spending the night in an almost-abandoned rest area wasn’t the safest thing in the world.  Yet in a weird way, he felt more at ease in the anonymity of being just another car tucked away in a shadowy corner off of the interstate than he did alone in a motel room.  Motel rooms reminded him of Jay; Tim could feel his absence more tangibly in them.  And anyways, neither car nor motel room was any defense against what he was afraid of.  Any other type of trouble that might come along, he could handle.   
  
            He let himself drift off, parked in the corner of the lonely rest stop, seat leaned back and listening to the hum of passing cars.  In the morning, he thought sleepily, he would go and find Jessica.  And then everything, somehow, would be okay…  
  
  
Tim dreamt that he was running through an endless maze of burnt-out hallways, crumbling brick walls covered in graffiti, chunks of plaster crunching underfoot as he ran.  Suddenly he was tackled by a dark shape, and they wrestled blindly on the floor, until Tim had the figure pinned down, hands wrapped tightly around his enemy’s throat, choking the life from him.  But in an instant, without moving, he found that himself and his combatant had traded places; now he was the one on his back, a hunched figure looming over him, identical to himself in every way save for the pale, smooth white skin of its face and the empty black smears where its eyes and mouth should have been.  It held a blade in its hand, which it raised high above its head, and Tim had just enough time to cry out before the pocket-knife plunged downward into his chest, again and again, as somewhere, in the distance, a familiar voice called his name…  
  
  
He jerked awake with a panicked start, taking a few long, gasping seconds to take in his surroundings; still in his car, still at the rest stop, the warm light of the sun now shining in through the windows.  He exhaled, trying to release the tension in his body, and groggily rubbed the sleep from his eyes.  It had been a year since the last time his life had known such violence, and he was still having nightmares.  He wondered if the dreams were some sort of karmic retribution for what he’d done; if so, he figured, it was a small price to pay for taking a man’s life.  
  
            He felt no less tired than before, and he wished he could just lie down again, but he had devoted as much time to sleeping as he could afford to spare.  Before hitting the road again, he had a small meal (if one could call it that) of beef jerky, trail mix and dried fruit from the supply of snacks he always traveled with, and then got out of the car to stretch his legs.  It was a warm Monday morning and there were a few more cars in the rest area now, though it was still fairly lightly populated.  Tim purchased a bottled coffee drink from a vending machine (he was going to need the energy boost after such a lousy night’s sleep, he thought), used the restroom, and then headed back to his car.  He checked his phone for service, thinking he should call Jessica and check in with her before arriving, but there was no reliable reception at this spot of the highway.  The sooner he got there and they connected safely, he reasoned, the better, and with that thought he started his car and got back on the road.  
  
  
The final leg of the journey went smoothly and without incident, and a few hours later he began to recognize the passing surroundings, and he knew he was almost there.  One never really appreciates how acquainted one is with even the most mundane of details about a familiar place, he thought, until one returns there after a long absence.  Tim had never been one to put down many roots, but he had stayed in this town longer than most other places; long enough to feel twinges of disorienting familiarity around every bend of the road.  He’d had a place here, which is exactly why, after a year of impermanent wandering, he felt so out of place now, seeing it again.  He felt as if he was driving backwards in time, back towards things dark and fateful and best left to rest in the past.  This place knew him, just as he knew it, but it hadn’t changed like he had.  Sure, some things are always a bit different after a long time away; a new storefront here, a renovated building there.  But as a general rule, people change more quickly than their surroundings.   
  
            As he got further into town, he relied upon that familiarity to guide him to his location.  He had never been to Jessica’s apartment before, but he knew approximately what part of town he could find the address she had given him in.  He navigated through the familiar streets until he came across what appeared to be the place.  It was a long L-shaped two-story apartment building, and Jessica’s apartment, she had told him, was the street-level unit on the far end.  He pulled his car into an open parking space.  He took a deep breath, allowing himself a moment to relax the tension in his body and let the long hours on the road clutching a steering wheel fall off his shoulders.  He hadn’t really thought about what he was going to say to her.  He supposed that he could no longer protect her by keeping her in the dark, and would have to come clean about everything; her participation in the events of the Marble Hornets entries, her forgotten relationship to Jay.  What he had done to Alex.  He hadn’t really thought about how that conversation might go.  
  
            There was no point sitting around speculating.  First priority was to make contact and he would see how it played out from there.  He stepped out of his car, walked up to the door of her unit, and knocked.  He waited, but there was no response.  He knocked again.  “Jessica?”  he called, through the door.  “It’s Tim.”  
  
            Still nothing.  He tried to peer through the window, but all the blinds were drawn and he could see no light or signs of movement through them.  A sense of unease was slowly rising in his stomach.  He knocked again, and then, more out of frustration than any genuine expectation of success, tried the door.  The knob turned, and the door swung open, unlatched.  
  
            Tim froze, surprised.  Hadn’t he warned her to keep the door locked?  He could think of few reasons why it should be unlocked now, and none that portended anything good.  He crept inside, slowly and quietly, alert for an intruder, before remembering that he had already blown any attempt at making a stealthy entrance with all the knocking.  “Jessica?” he called again, and again there was no answer.  
  
            The apartment seemed deserted.  It wasn’t a big place; your eyes could take in over half the apartment within seconds of entering.  Just a kitchen and living room with a bathroom and bedroom off of it.  It was sparsely furnished, betraying a functional lifestyle, and there was no sign of a struggle.  Everything was, in fact, quite tidy.  _Maybe she just went out and forgot to lock the door_ , Tim thought hopefully, not really believing it as he did.  He pushed open the bedroom door, half expecting to see some dramatic tableau, but there was no one inside.  The room was similarly minimal: a bed, a desk, a dresser in a closet.  A few posters on the walls: prints of paintings and photographs; flowers and cities and skies.  Only three signs of anything out of the ordinary: Her bed was unmade (at odds with the tidiness of the rest of the room), her cell phone sat abandoned on her bedside table, and there was a laptop open on her desk.  Tim’s eye was caught by something on the computer screen, a familiar web page, and he moved over to examine it more closely.  It was Entry #76, paused on a shot towards the end of the video; an image of Jessica, lying unconscious on the forest floor in Rosswood Park.  
  
            Deliberately placed across the keyboard of the laptop was a sheet of paper, a message violently scrawled upon it in big, dark capital letters: “FIND HER.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never that easy, is it?
> 
> If we're talking 3-act structure, I believe you'd call this "End of Part One."
> 
> Tune in next time to find out where tf Jessica went (I'll give y'all 3 guesses).


	5. Lost

Jessica had fallen asleep very late that night, or perhaps more accurately, very early.  Once she had begun watching the entries, she had found it impossible to stop; the hours had slipped by without her noticing as she sat transfixed in the pale glow of revelation from her laptop screen.  She hadn’t even been aware of the light of day fading from behind her blinds.  
  
            The name Alex Kralie had caught her attention from the start of the very first video, and there was something so familiar about the narrator, Jay.  It was when Tim appeared a few entries in that she began to connect the dots, like puzzle pieces snapping back together into place in her brain, forming a picture that she had forgotten was there.  It was almost (but not quite) enough to prepare her for the later shock of seeing herself on screen.  She had been in a hotel, with Jay…  
  
            Few things are quite as disturbing as the sensation of seeing of your personal history playing out like theater on a screen in front of you, still maddeningly unremembered, your brain unable to conjure up any recollections of the events even as you witness proof that they occurred.  It was hard enough to accept any of what she saw in the entries as real; it was all too strange, too bizarre and disturbing, this story of masked men and faceless creatures, of lost memories and unburied secrets.  She wanted to believe that it was all some elaborate fiction, some fake prank or some kind of twisted joke, but an inexplicable instinct told her it was all true, that it had really happened, and this knowledge frightened her to her core.  
   
            Yet in the face of such a thing, the restructuring of all your preconceived truths by new and terrifying information, what can you do except keep looking, helplessly, as your personal history is reshaped around you?  So she watched on.  She watched as Alex threatened her with a gun, and felt an irrational thrill of fear for her past self.  She watched as Jay died, and wished that she could remember meeting him.  She watched as Tim fought with Alex for a final time, listened to him say the words “when you killed Amy, did you feel like you were in control then,” and she felt a stab of something like grief in her chest, though her mind was numb to the revelation, ducking around the blow, refusing to focus on it; it felt like something that someone was telling her in a dream.  She watched herself have a conversation with Tim in the final entry, the one event she could actually remember, and it was a terrible remembering, because it affirmed the reality of all the other unremembered ordeals and unnerving scenes that she had witnessed.  There could be no escaping it now, no theories or rationalizations to hide behind.  
  
            Lastly, she watched the video at the very end, with a different kind of title than the others, which was time-stamped as being not from years ago, but a single day.  Its content should have disturbed her more than anything else she had seen, but instead she merely felt drained, too emotionally and mentally exhausted and disoriented to register the magnitude of the revelation.  When she was finished, she simply set the laptop aside on her desk and curled up under the warm, protective covers of her bed, feeling like she understood less about the world than she ever had, and knew far more than she had ever wanted.  
  
            That was where sleep found her, eventually, as the confused and whirling storm inside her mind gradually succumbed to exhaustion.  But wakefulness found her somewhere else entirely.  
  


Jessica woke slowly, groggily, her brain taking a long, disoriented moment to register the wrongness of her surroundings.  She was lying not on the soft sheets of her bed, but on the damp and dirty ground of…where was she?  Above and around her were not the walls and ceiling of her room, but the curved, ridged metal plating of a tunnel.  Not just any tunnel, she realized with a start, but the drainage tunnel in Rosswood Park, a familiar sight from the entries she had just watched.  
  
            Remembering this, she remembered everything that had happened in that tunnel before, and her confusion gave way to fear, a wave of panic rushing in and overwhelming her.  She began to hyperventilate, which quickly turned into another violent coughing fit, forcing her onto her hands and knees as the coughs racked her body and her mind raced.  The last thing she remembered was being alone in her room.  How and why had she ended up here?  She forced herself to calm down, taking deep, shuddering breaths as the coughing fit passed.  She wished she had some water; her throat was dry and ragged.  When she had steadied herself, she stood up to take a closer look at her surroundings.  She had woken up in the midpoint of the tunnel, and she could see trees and bright light through the openings on either side; it appeared to be late morning, maybe early afternoon.  There was nothing on the ground on either side of her.  She seemed to be alone, yet she felt exposed, as if there were eyes on her.  She weighed the risks in her mind for a moment, and then called out “Hello?”  
  
            It came out weak and quiet, her voice cracking.  She swallowed drily and tried again, louder this time.  For a moment she waited, listening, but all was still and silent.  She checked for her phone, but couldn’t find it on her, and realized that she had left it on the table in her bedroom; however she had gotten here, she had brought nothing with her.  Her feet were bare, and she was dressed only in her clothes from the previous night: t-shirt and sweatpants, an appropriate outfit for home and for bed and for comfort, not for being stranded in a park.  Great.  Alone, in an unfamiliar secluded area, with no phone, no wallet, no car, not even any shoes.  She remembered then, also, that Tim had been planning on arriving in town to see her that morning.  What would he do if he found her missing, with no way of contacting her?  She had to find her way back home somehow, but she was totally disoriented.  She knew from the entries that she had been to Rosswood Park before, but she had no memory of its layout.  Still, there was nothing else for it.  She picked a direction at random, and slowly walked out of the tunnel and into the park.

  
Jessica wandered through the woods, following the trail, alert for any sound of footsteps following her or other suspicious sounds.  Yet she heard nothing.  It was not entirely silent; there was birdsong and other ambient noises, and occasionally a rustling low in the undergrowth as if of some small animal moving about.  But she heard no voices, no distant cars, no sign of human life.  She knew that Rosswood, no matter how large and sprawling it might be, was just a public park outside of her town, but she felt like she could just have easily been in some far-off forgotten corner of the world, or perhaps the last person on Earth.  Under normal circumstances it might have been a peaceful feeling, but instead she was on edge, jumping at every shadow, every little sound.  Her head was still aching, her throat still parched, and she was beginning to feel very hungry; how long had it been since she had eaten?  The sensation of walking through the woods barefoot was strange and uncomfortable at first, little branches and pebbles poking at the soles of her feet, but she began to acclimate to the feeling as she went.  She kept following the path, until it felt like she had been walking for hours, although she could not have given an accurate estimate of how long it had actually been.  Time, like human civilization, felt like a distant concept under the trees of Rosswood.   
  
            And then, finally, the path opened up to a clearing, and in front of her she saw…the tunnel?  She blinked, disbelieving, but there it was, the same end of the drainage tunnel that she had ventured out from.  But that was impossible.  She couldn’t have gone in a circle, she had followed the path, she had been walking for so long, surely by now she had to have been far from her starting point.  She remembered, then, a strange detail about Rosswood Park from the entries; how the layout had seemed inconsistent, how landmarks had seemed to shift location, how Jay and Tim had sometimes set out to find a certain point and ended up in a different area of the park entirely.  Though she did not know how it was possible, she knew that if she tried again, even if she set out from the other end of the tunnel this time, all her long and lonely walking through the woods would only lead her right back here.  She was trapped.  
  
            Jessica sank down to the ground, leaning against the metal wall at the mouth of the tunnel, pulling her legs up to her chest, feeling utterly, hopelessly lost and alone.  She stayed that way for a long time, or maybe a short time, or maybe no time at all, and it was there that she was discovered.

 


	6. Found

Tim took a deep breath as he looked up at the threshold of Rosswood Park, the furthest edges of its dark maze of trees looming above him.  He had enough experience in this area to know that if mysterious events were occurring, they were likely to be centered on one of a small handful of places.  Though he preferred it to the other relevant locations in the area, which held far more personal ghosts for him, Rosswood Park was nonetheless not a place he had ever wanted to set foot in again.  It was not a friendly place, nor a safe one.  His own words to Jay, from what felt like ages ago, echoed in his head: “I’ve _seen_ what happens when you go there alone.”  
  
            And yet Jessica was in there, somewhere, and she was alone, and as that image from Entry #76 on Jessica’s laptop had no doubt been left there to remind him, the last time she had been alone in Rosswood Park it had not gone well for her.  He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a bottle of his medication; can’t be too prepared where this place is concerned.  He dry-swallowed three pills, steeled himself, and then walked down the trail into the forest, silently praying for luck, but knowing that anything within those trees capable of hearing was no friend to him.

As he moved further into the dense, all-consuming forest, Tim let his intuition guide him, operating on instinctive memory for the trails and paths that he’d last walked years before.  Unsure what to expect, he remained tense and alert, trying to be prepared for anything.  The park was vast, and Jessica could be anywhere, yet he knew, instinctually, where to go.   It was sometimes difficult to find things you were looking for in Rosswood, but the park had a way of sending you where you needed to be.  So it was in this instance as well; he hadn’t realized he was nearing the tunnel until the trees parted and he saw it in front of him.  And as his eyes took in the tunnel, he also spotted the girl sitting on the ground at its mouth.  
  
            “Jessica!”  
  
            She turned her head, looking at him with an expression of surprise and then sudden relief and excitement.  She stood, a grin on her face, waving her arm.  “Tim!  Over here!”  
  
            He clambered, quickly but carefully, over the rocks between him and the tunnel’s entrance, until he was face to face with Jessica.  He noted her attire, her unkempt hair and bare, dirt-stained feet; she looked like she hadn’t been expecting to find herself here.  He knew the feeling all too well.  
  
            Before he could say anything, she had launched herself into a hug, arms tightly wrapped around him while his own hung awkwardly in the air, unsure how to react.  No one had hugged him like that in a very long time.  Perhaps Jessica sensed his discomfort, because she quickly pulled away, looking a bit embarrassed.  
  
            “Uh…hi,” he said, lamely.  “You alright?”  
  
            “Sorry.”  She looked down at her feet sheepishly.  “I just…I was beginning to think no one was going to find me out here.  I tried to find my own way out, of course, but the path just led me right back here, like…like I wasn’t…allowed to leave?  I know that sounds impossible, but-“  
  
            “It’s not impossible,” he cut her off.  “This place…doesn’t really work like most places.  Don’t ask me to explain it.  I don’t really understand it myself.”  
  
            “I don’t even know how I got here!” she said, gesturing in a sweeping motion towards the tunnel, a panicked note of confused, barely-concealed desperation in her voice.  “The last thing I remember was being in my bed, and then when I woke up I was here, in this…this tunnel.”  
  
            She was staring at him intently, as if looking for answers.  “I have a few ideas how that might have happened,” he told her.  “None of them a good sign.”  
  
            Jessica narrowed her eyes suspiciously.  “How did you know where to find me, anyways?”  
  
            For a brief moment, Tim hesitated; he didn’t want to alarm her, but they were beyond the point where any safety could be generated by withholding information.  “Someone left me a clue at your apartment,” he explained.  
  
            “The same someone who was filming me through my window?”  
  
            “Yeah, I guess it must have- wait, how do you know about that?”  
  
            “I watched the entries, Tim.  Last night.”  Her voice took on a harder edge.  “There’s a lot you haven’t been telling me.”  
  
            For a moment Tim stood agape as Jessica fixed him with a stern, expectant look.  He had expected to have to explain the whole impossible-sounding story, and he had expected her to be upset, if she had even believed him at all.  He had certainly not expected her to be one step ahead of him, and the surprise threw him off his game.  
  
            “How’d you find out about the entries?” he asked, unable to keep the question from sounding like an admission of guilt.  
  
            “Our mysterious friend pointed me towards them.  Sent me a text, of all things.  Not sure how they got my number…”  She trailed off in thought for a moment, before sharply refocusing her attention on Tim.  “That’s not the point.  You want to tell me why you’ve been hiding all this from me?”  
  
            “I - I thought it was safer for you to not know,” he stammered.  “Thought you could just get back to living a normal life.  That’s why I never told Jay where you were, and that’s why I never told you what had happened to you.  I…I just didn’t want you to ever get involved in this shit again.  I wanted to keep you away from it.  Evidently it caught up to you anyways, so, I don’t know.”  
  
            “You should have told me, Tim.  We’re talking about my life, my past!  I deserved to know.”  
  
            “I know,” he admitted.  “You’re right.  I shouldn’t have kept secrets from anyone.  Maybe something would have turned out differently if I had been more honest with…if I hadn’t…”  
  
            He trailed off weakly, but Jessica nodded, looking serious.  She said nothing further to challenge him, which Tim took to mean that she accepted his apology.  For a few seconds they stood there awkwardly, unsure how to proceed from there, until Jessica broke the silence.  “We should probably talk about all this _after_ we get out of here.  That is, if we even can get out…”  
  
            “Good idea,” said Tim, feeling suddenly hyperaware of how quiet it was.  Not a single thing stirred in the trees around them.  He had been so focused on Jessica, and on the conversation, that he’d barely looked at the tunnel, and now he found himself staring into it at the bright half-circle of light on the other side and remembering what had happened once, when he had been here with Jay, a long time ago…  
  
            The hairs on his arms were standing up, and he felt a prickle on the back of his neck.  “Let’s go,” he said brusquely.  “Follow me, I think I know the way back.”

They set off back in the direction Tim had come, following the path and hoping that this time it would lead to the exit it was supposed to connect to.  The sun was beginning to get lower in the sky; the light underneath the dense canopy of leaves was fading.  As they walked, Tim began to become aware of Jessica coughing; she was trying to contain it, but he knew that cough and he knew how bad it could get.  Sure enough, within minutes she was having to signal him to hold up while she struggled to stop the spasm of deep, dry coughs racking her lungs.  He waited until she finally had it under control again, and then he produced the pill bottle from his pocket and held it out to her.  
  
            “Here.  Take a couple of these.  It’ll help.”  
  
            She took the bottle from him and examined it, looking skeptical.  “Are you sure?”  
  
            “Let me guess.  Nothing else you’ve tried taking has worked, has it?”  
  
            “How did you know I –“  
  
            “I’ve been there.  That’s not a normal cough.  It won’t respond to most ordinary treatment, but these help.  They’re technically anti-seizure meds, but they kind of…guard your brain from the effects of – of that thing.”  
  
            He wondered if he was making sense to her, and not for the first time he resented the limited vocabulary that he had for discussing the forces that held such sway over his life; he and Jay had developed a kind of shorthand on the few occasions where they had openly discussed it, so he stuck to those old habits now.  But from the intent way she was looking at him, Tim could tell that Jessica got what he was referring to, and seemed no more eager than him to put a name to it.  
  
            “Anyway, they should also help stabilize your symptoms.  It’s okay, trust me.”  
  
            She nodded, and he watched as, with some difficulty, she dry-swallowed a couple pills.  He took the bottle back when she was finished, and together they proceeded down the trail.  Tim led the way, Jessica close behind.  They didn’t speak, but remained vigilant, focusing their attention on the woods around them.  Tim heard nothing, but he felt like something was nearby, watching them.  He had felt that way before when journeying through Rosswood, but the sensation was no less disquieting for its familiarity.  They had reached a fork in the trail when, abruptly, he stopped walking and held up an arm to signal Jessica to halt as well.  
  
            “What is it?” she whispered, as he scanned the trees.  He thought he’d caught a glimpse of something.  Had it just been his imagination, or…?  
  
            No.  There it was, poking around the trunk of a nearby tree: a flash of light, bouncing off the reflective lens of a camera.  
  
            A dark figure detached itself from the tree trunk and took off like a shot down the path.  Without thinking, without hesitating, Tim charged down the trail after it.  He could hear Jessica shouting his name, hear her footfalls behind him, running to keep up, but his focus was on the figure ahead; close enough to see fleeing down the path, but too far away to get a good look at in the deepening dusk of the forest.  
  
            After a minute or two of pursuit, Tim’s chest was burning.  The trees were beginning to thin, as if they were reaching the outskirts of the forest.  Suddenly, the figure swerved off of the path and darted into the trees ahead.  Tim swore under his breath, panting.  He tried to follow, but his pace was slowing; the figure weaved lithely between the trees, and soon vanished from sight.  He came to a halt, forced to catch his breath.  Damn it, he thought in frustration.  He should have quit smoking earlier.  It had been a long time since he’d needed to push his lungs that hard, and they were not proving quite up to the challenge.  He turned around at the sound of Jessica running up behind him, also panting and out of breath.  There were leaves in her hair and a red, fresh-looking cut on her cheek where a branch had whipped against her face as she ran.  She looked angry.  
  
            “What” *pant* “the HELL” *pant* “was that about?!”  
  
            “I saw someone…I think they were filming us.”  
  
            “I don’t” *pant* “care what you saw.  We could have” *pant* “gotten separated and not been able” *pant* “to find each other again.  I’m not even wearing shoes, you jerk!”  She gestured angrily down at her bare feet, and Tim did feel a bit guilty; he had forgotten that detail in the heat of the moment, forgotten that it was a lost and unprepared Jessica beside him and not…  
  
            “Did Jay put up with you dashing around chasing after things at the drop of a hat like this?!” she demanded, and he flinched, he physically recoiled, just slightly, but Jessica must have noticed because her tone softened.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry.  Just…please don’t pull something like that on me again.  It’s getting dark.  We need to stick together and find our way out of here.”  
  
            Tim stared into the trees where the figure had disappeared.  “I think we’re actually near the edge of the park.  And I think…look, this sounds weird and I can’t explain it, but I think we should see what there is over here that that guy was running to.”  
  
            Jessica looked like she was about to protest, but then the look deflated, and she shrugged.  “Fine.  I don’t really have any better ideas.  Just don’t leave me behind again.”  
  


They pushed on ahead, well off the beaten path now, taking it slow to let Jessica pick her steps with care, trying to avoid trodding on anything poky.  The trees were definitely thinning, replaced with dense, twiggy undergrowth that they slowly, carefully pushed their way through.  After a few minutes, a structure appeared before them; a small abandoned building, all brick walls and broken windows, half-buried in overgrown branches.  There was a large wooden door on the side nearest them, hanging open half-loose on its hinges.  Tim held up a finger to his lips to signal Jessica to be quiet, and together they crept, as noiselessly as possible, up to the threshold of the building.  
  
            Tim peered around the side of the door.  Inside, the building was mainly one large room, and it was empty of everything but discarded litter and rubble, but he could see an entryway to a smaller room in the far corner.  Jessica behind him, he crept towards it carefully, inch by inch, hoping to get the drop on the mystery figure.  But when he finally reached the doorway and sprung through it, there was no one there to take by surprise; just a little room with a makeshift bed that was nothing more than a dirty mattress and stained blanket.  
  
            “Hey, Tim,” said Jessica, breaking the silence now that it was apparent they were alone.  “I recognize this place.  It was in one of the entries.  Totheark…Brian…used to stay here.”  
  
            She was right, he realized.  He recognized it too now, though he had never been to this particular location before; its appearance on the Marble Hornets channel had been in Entry #68, which totheark had filmed, not him or Jay.  He didn’t take the time to ponder this discovery, however; his attention was focused on something else that had caught his eye; a small, dark rectangular object, left dead center on the bed, its seemingly-casual placement too precise to be anything less than deliberate.  He picked it up and examined it.   
  
            Well, Tim thought, as he looked at the thumb drive in his hand.  That’s a new one.


	7. Invitation

The sun was setting quickly, and though it was a warm, pleasant evening, neither of them liked the thought of being in Rosswood after dark.  Fortunately, it didn’t take them long after that to find their way out of the park.  The little abandoned structure, whatever it had once been used for, was hidden away in the overgrown foliage on the outer edge of the forest, and once they pushed their way out of the branches, it was only a matter of looping back around to the front entrance, skirting the edge of the tree line.  It was almost fully night when they finally made it there; only the faintest hint of an orange sunset remained in the darkening sky.  The parking lot, never exactly crowded even at the best of times, was nearly deserted save for Tim’s car and one other.  
  
            Jessica gasped, pointing at the second vehicle sitting across the row from Tim’s.  “That’s my car!”  
  
            “Wait, what?”  He glanced at her, looking confused.  
  
            “I - I didn’t drive that here.  Or at least, I don’t _think_ I did.  I can’t – I can’t remember…”  
  
            She ran up to the car and tried the door.  It was unlocked; the keys were sitting, casually and undisturbed, on the front seat.  
  
            “Tim, was – was this here before?  When you got here, did you see this car here?”  
  
            “I’m not sure.  I mean – I think so?  There were more cars here earlier.”  
  
            Jessica felt, not for the first time that day, like she was losing her grasp on the facts, unsure what to believe.  She stared at her car, her brow twisted in a look of concerned concentration, trying to piece together how both she and the vehicle had gotten there.  That horrible throbbing in her head was beginning to return, but she was rooted to the spot, unable to bring herself to move.  
  
            Tim, clearly sensing her distress, stepped up behind her and gently grasped her shoulders, turning her around to face him.  “Hey.  Jessica.  Look at me.”  
  
            She glanced up at him, not trying to hide the worry and exhaustion playing across her face and twisting her hoarse voice into a pitiable squeak.  “Tim, what’s happening to me?”  
  
            Tim spoke slowly, deliberately, and for once he didn’t shy away from her gaze, but held eye contact with her. “Well…if you’ve seen the entries you know I kinda have some experience with what you’re feeling right now.  There were times, a lot of times, when I…when I wasn’t myself, where I’d wake up somewhere and be missing time, with no memory of where I’d been or what I’d done.  Sometimes just a night, sometimes more.  I never got used to it.  It’s scary as hell.  Every time it happened, I felt like I was losing my mind.”  
  
            Jessica looked back into his eyes, thinking back on everything she’d learned about this man.  He was in some respects almost a stranger to her, yet she knew more about him than she did about many people she was closer with.  The things he’d done, the things he’d been, the things he’d lost; the shape and scale of his life’s tragedies.  She had seen things in those videos that had frightened her, things that sent shivers through her when she thought of them; Tim, masked and monstrous, had been one of those things, initially, but like Jay, she had come to realize how much more he was than that.  Sometimes monsters wear masks to disguise themselves as good people, and sometimes good people are forced by fate to wear the masks of monsters; Tim, she knew, was in the latter category.  
  
            “The thing is,” he continued, “I wasn’t crazy.  There was a reason for what was happening to me; a terrifying reason, sure, but something I could point to and say “It’s not my fault.”  And knowing that helped me overcome it.  Helped me stabilize myself, and get to a point where I could live normally, without being afraid of what I might do.  If what’s happening to you is something similar, then it’s not too late for you either.  We’re gonna work it out.  Together.  Everything’s going to be fine, okay?”  
  
            “Okay.”  She straightened, inhaling deeply and then letting it out.  “Yeah.  Okay.  Thank you.”  
  
            “Don’t mention it,” he said.  “Are you good to drive?”  
  
            “Yeah.”  Her head hurt, and she could feel the blisters already forming on her aching feet, but she felt immensely ready to be home.  “Yeah, I guess I have to be.”  
  
            “Okay,” Tim said.  “You head home and I’ll follow right behind you in my car.”  
  
            She nodded, and slipped into her car as Tim headed back towards his own.  She gave herself a moment to lean back against the seat and relax her tired body; she felt like she could pass out right then and there if she let herself.  Instead, she turned the key in the ignition and focused her remaining energy on getting safely home.   
  
            Glancing in the rearview mirror as she turned out of the parking lot, her eyes caught a brief glimpse of movement, perhaps imagined, at the dark edge of the trees of Rosswood Park.  
  
  
“Do you think it’s safe to be here?”  
  
            They were back in Jessica’s apartment; she felt much better now that she had gotten some food and water in her, had showered and changed clothes, and had bandaged the cuts and blisters from her trek through the park.  Everything had been exactly as she had left it; everything except for the note sitting on her desk by her open laptop: “FIND HER.”  The sight of it made her shiver, as if all the heat had suddenly left her body.  
  
            “I mean, with this kind of thing, there’s nowhere where you’re guaranteed to be safe,” said Tim.  “So that makes here as safe as anywhere.”  
  
            “Thanks for making me feel better,” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes a little.  
  
            “Uh huh,” Tim mumbled.  He seemed distracted.  “Hey, can I use your laptop?”  
  
            “What for?”  
  
            “I found this in that little abandoned building.”  He showed her the thumb drive.  “I think it belongs to whoever we were chasing back there.”  
  
            “You think whatever’s on it is something important?”  
  
            “It usually is with this sort of thing.”  
  
            Jessica shrugged, pulling up a chair for Tim at her desk.  “Worth a look, I guess.”  
  
            Tim plugged the drive into her laptop, saying, too late, “Sorry in advance if this gives you like, a ton of malicious viruses or something.”  
  
            “Oh my god, Tim.”  
  
            His mouth twitched in a brief impression of a smile.  “I mean, it probably won’t.  Just covering my bases here.”  
  
            But there was no sign of viruses; the only thing that appeared to be on the drive was a single video file, ominously labeled “INVITATION.”  
  
            Tim glanced at her, as if for permission, and she whispered “Play it.”  
  
            The video began with a few seconds of empty blackness, and a screeching, distorted noise emitted from it, as the screen displayed a violent fuzz of static.  Barely visible amidst the shifting static background, text appeared, in the same pixilated font used in the “COME BACK” video on the channel.  The background faded to black, but the static remained overlaid on the text, as if the words were filled with an angry, pulsing black and white hum.  They read “HELLO, TIM.  JESSICA.”  
  
            Jessica gasped softly, and sensed Tim stiffen in the chair beside her.  They both watched intently as the text changed and continued.  
  
            “IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU BOTH.”  
  
            “IT’S BEEN SUCH A LONG TIME.”  
  
            The backdrop changed, the words overlaid against brief flashes of footage of Tim and Jessica from Entry #87.  Then the text continued.  
  
            “WE SHOULD MEET.”  
  
            “WE HAVE A LOT TO DISCUSS.”  
  
            “THERE ARE THINGS LEFT UNFINISHED.”  
  
            More images from the entries flashed on the screen.  Jessica recognized the location shown; the college campus where Jay, Brian and Alex had all met their fates.  
  
            “FIND ME WHERE GHOSTS LIVE.”  
  
            “WE’LL HAVE A CHAT.”  
  
            The piercing, distorted screeching returned, making them both jump, as a final image was displayed, this time one that neither of them recognized; a camera, lying on its side on a dirty floor, next to a dark red handprint.  
  
            And then the video was over.  
  
            Neither of them spoke for a moment; there was a thick, palpable stillness in the room.  Finally Jessica broke the silence with the question they were both turning over in their minds, whispering “Who – who do you think it is?”  
  
            She wasn’t sure why she was whispering; it wasn’t as if anyone else was there to hear (her eyes went to the window, double-checking this fact), but nonetheless that video had made her feel like there was a third, unseen presence in the room with them, something intangible, yet alive.  Her skin prickled.  
  
            Tim sighed, rubbing his eyes with his palms.  “I don’t know, Jessica.  I don’t know who it could be.  Everyone’s gone, except for me and you.  They’re all dead.”  
  
            “Are you sure?”  There was a doubt nagging at her mind, its source untraceable.  Something felt wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on what was spurring the feeling.  
  
            “Pretty sure, yeah, given that half of them I saw the bodies with my own eyes and the others Alex killed years ago.”  
  
            “You’re positive?  He couldn’t have missed anyone?”  
  
            “Like who?”  Tim sounded irate; his voice was getting louder.  “Who could he have missed, Jessica?  And why would they only be contacting us now?”  
  
            “I don’t know,” she admitted, “but Alex thought he killed me once, and he was wrong.  I – I survived.  You don’t think there’s _any_ chance that, I don’t know, Sarah or Seth or…or Amy?”  
  
            There it was; the words pushing past the growing lump in her throat, a feeling of hope and trepidation building inside her.  It was such a long shot, she knew, and yet…and yet…  
  
            Tim was staring at her, with a look somewhere between pity and frustration.  “Jessica…Amy’s gone.  Alex killed her, years ago.”  
  
            “You keep saying that,” she retorted, surprised to hear her own voice rising now.  “But do you _know_?  Do you actually _know_ , Tim?  Did he say it, did he say “I killed Amy,” those exact words?  Did he tell you when, did he tell you how?”  
  
            Tim stammered, exasperated.  “N – No, but I accused him of killing her, I said “when you killed Amy,” and he didn’t deny it!”  
  
            “Because you stabbed him in the neck before he could say anything!”  
  
            “Because he was strangling me!  It was a fight, Jessica, not a conversation!”  
  
            They sat there for a moment, in tense silence.  Jessica fumed internally, forcing herself to try and calm down and approach the subject rationally, but she couldn’t get past her frustration.  Why was Tim so determined not to let her have this one little bit of hope?  
  
            “I don’t get you.  Don’t you want to know who it is, too?” she asked, her tone firm but quieter.  
  
            Tim sighed again.  “I do.  Believe me, I’m just as curious as you are.  But mostly I just want this to be over.  And whoever it is, I guess we’ll find out soon.”  
  
            “Wait, so…” She had been so absorbed by guessing the person’s identity that she hadn’t thought about what their next move should be.  “We’re really going to go to…to that place and find this person?  What if it’s a trap?”  
  
            Tim shrugged.  “I don’t see that we have much of a choice.  Doing nothing isn’t really an option.  They know where you live, so it’s either take them up on their offer now or wait until they do something to force our hand.  Might as well get it over with.”  
  
            She could see the logic in that, but it didn’t help her feel any less uncomfortable with the idea.  “Okay,” she conceded.  “We’ll go tomorrow, and we’ll stick together, and whatever this is, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”  
  
            He nodded.  “Thank you.”  
  
            Jessica yawned.  It had been a long, weird day, and exhaustion was setting in.  “I’m worn out, I’m gonna go to bed now.  You’ll be okay on the couch tonight?”  
  
            “Yeah, it’s fine,” Tim said.  “Honestly more comfortable than a lot of places I’ve slept.”  
  
            “Alright.  Goodnight, Tim.  Get some sleep.”  
  
            “You too, Jessica.  I’ll be right here if…if you need me.”  
  
            There was an unspoken “if anything happens in the night, just scream really loud” kind of undertone to that statement, but despite all the fear and tension and uncertainty that defined her life at the present moment, Jessica had to admit that she felt safer with Tim there.  Whatever the next day might bring, at least she wouldn’t have to face it alone.  
  
            She climbed into bed (fully dressed this time, just in case), feeling the softness of her mattress soaking up and absorbing the ache in her muscles.  For a long time, she lay there curled up in the dark, her mind attempting to sort through the jumble of strange events and fearful possibilities that her life had so suddenly become.  As the minutes slipped by, her thoughts blurred together, and shifted from the coherent narrative of waking thought to the weightless, drifting preamble that heralded the coming of unconsciousness.  
  
            That night, for once, her dreams went mercifully unremembered.


	8. Revelation

When Jessica awoke the next day, she was relieved to find herself still in her bed.  She yawned, rolling over to check the clock on her bedside table.  It was 12:14 PM.  She groaned, burying her face in the pillow.  Her legs still ached from the previous day’s hike, though she noted, with no small degree of satisfaction, that the pain in her throat and her head was greatly lessened this morning; perhaps Tim’s pills really were helping.  
  
            She didn’t want to get up yet, but she also didn’t want to keep Tim waiting, so she decided to take a peek and see if he was still asleep; if so, she would go back to bed and let both of them get a little bit of extra rest.  Resolving this, she forced herself to sit up, and then to stand and quietly open the door to the living room.  
  
            Not only was Tim awake, he was already up, dressed, and in her kitchen, cooking something on the stove.  He looked up as she entered, alerted by the sound of the door opening.  
  
            “Morning,” he said casually.  “Well, afternoon, technically.  Took the liberty of making breakfast.  Hope that’s okay.”  He gestured with his head towards the table where a plate was sitting, steam still rising off of a freshly-made omelet.  “That one was gonna be for me, but since you’re up now you can go ahead and have it while I finish making the second one.”  
  
            “Oh wow,” she teased.  “My own gourmet chef.  How did I live without you?”  
  
            Tim didn’t smile, exactly, but she was pretty sure she saw the corner of his mouth bend upwards for a moment.  “I want to say “By the look of your fridge, just barely,”” he replied, “but it would be a bit hypocritical of me to criticize someone else’s lifestyle.”  
  
            “How _have_ you been getting by?” she asked, sitting down to eat.  “You never talk about yourself.”  
  
            “Oh, you know,” he said evasively, tending to the second omelet on the frying pan.  “Not much to tell, really.  I keep on the move, I do a bit of this and that here and there.  Living the dream.”  
  
            She took a bite of her omelet.  It was surprisingly delicious; certainly better than the quick and easy bare-bones cooking that she’d long since settled into the habit of.  “If you ever get tired of wandering and want to hold down a job for a while,” she offered, “you could be a cook at one of those little roadside diners.  Class up the menu, probably drive their sales through the roof.”  
  
            He chuckled softly, and Jessica gave herself a little internal pat on the back; so it _was_ possible to make him laugh.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
            “Seriously, though,” she told him through a mouthful of egg.  “I’m honestly impressed.  You might have a hidden talent here.  If we don’t make it through the day and this turns out to be my last meal, I could do a lot worse.”  
  
            “Tell you what,” he said, sliding into the seat across from her with a plate and a just-finished omelet of his own.  “If we _do_ live to see another morning, I’ll make pancakes next time.”  
  
            “Yes!  Finally, an incentive to keep living!”  
  
            She was on a roll with the witty graveside humor, she thought proudly, and it seemed to be a mode of conversation that Tim responded well to.  After weeks of lonely sickness, the company and her improved health had her in surprisingly good spirits; almost good enough to ignore the looming threat of mystery stalkers and unknown dangers that they were about to walk into.  
  
            But it couldn’t be ignored forever; after they finished eating, and Tim did the dishes, he looked at her and said “Are you ready to go?”  
  
            A tickle of trepidation began rising up inside her, but she forced it down, and nodded.  “Are you?”  
  
            “Ready as I’ll ever be.  We’ll take my car; I know the way there.”  
  


They drove in silence, neither speaking about what was ahead, for how do you discuss something that you can’t anticipate?  They didn’t even know if the person they were going in search of was friend or foe, only that he or she seemed to know them, and had gone to some effort to bring them together; for what purpose, they couldn’t say. Tim seemed prepared for the worst (she noted the tension in how he held himself as he drove, the focus in his eyes, and she wondered what hopes or fears might be going through his mind), but Jessica couldn’t shake the silly, impossible idea that it might be Amy, alive and back somehow.  Even if she wasn’t the same, if she was different now, like Brian had been, Jessica would take it.  
  
            They had been driving for about 40 minutes, through increasingly wooded areas outside of town, when they reached their destination: a small, secluded college campus, like a clearing encircled by trees, its flat, neatly-trimmed lawns peppered with tall, brick buildings.  They pulled into a parking lot and got out of the car, stretching their legs.  The place seemed empty, and Jessica saw no people within sight; the air was almost unnervingly quiet and still.  
  
            “Huh,” said Tim.  “It looks exactly the same.  Kinda surprised this place hasn’t been like, demolished or something by now.”  
  
            “Is it abandoned?”  Though there was no one around, she found herself speaking softly, as if her voice was afraid to disturb the air with its vibrations.  
  
            “Not exactly, but just about.  I remember reading up on this place, before the first time I came here.  It’s old, and it was costing too much to maintain it, so they finally built a new campus a few years ago, but now they don’t seem to know what to do with this place.  There’s only a handful of classrooms and administrative offices and stuff still being used for anything here, and a lot of these buildings are falling apart, or all hollowed out inside.  Or at least, they were the last time I was here.”  
  
            The sun was shining brightly, and the campus was quiet; only the faint sound of birdsong and distant cars could be heard.  Nonetheless, Jessica glanced around apprehensively; she didn’t want to have to explain who they were or what their business was in an almost entirely unused campus if they ran into a groundskeeper or something.   
  
            “So where in this place are we supposed to look?” she asked.  
  
            “I’ve got a couple ideas.  Here, before we go any further –“  
  
            He held out the bottle of pills; there weren’t many remaining, but she took it gratefully and downed a couple.  She handed it back to Tim, and he did the same.  
  
            “Alright, let’s go.  Follow me.”  
  
            He led her down the path, along the brick buildings.  They were all at least three stories tall, and their walls were covered in rows of windows, which made Jessica uncomfortable; she felt exposed, as if every window was an eye watching them pass.  She glanced up at the windows as they walked by, alert for any movement behind the glass, any sign of someone watching, but she saw nothing.  
  
            After a moment Tim led her up to the door of a large hall, and gave it a questioning tug.  To Jessica’s surprise, it swung open.  He motioned to her to follow, and they slipped cautiously inside.  
  
  
They were standing in a large, high-ceilinged room, with wooden walls and concrete flooring; save for two tall pillars in the center of the hall, it was empty, as if whatever had once occupied the space had long since been cleared out.  
  
            “I think this place was a library once,” Tim whispered, and even at a low volume his voice echoed through the room, like a soft breeze through the years-old dust of silence, sounding much too loud.  “Come on, let’s check upstairs.”  
  
            They crossed the room, their footsteps on the stone floor reverberating through the hall, making Jessica wince; there could be no sneaking up unnoticed on anyone waiting for them here.  Tim led them up the staircase at the far side of the room, up to the third floor.  The light of the sun outside was shining through the windows, reflecting off the glossy white varnish of the brick walls.  He stopped, frozen, when he reached the top of the stairs, staring intently ahead; there was a small room directly in front of them, the door hanging invitingly open.  
  
            “What is it?”  Jessica whispered, but Tim didn’t respond; he was clutching the railing of the stairs firmly with one fist, his knuckles white.  She crept forward to investigate, and he made no move to stop her.  
  
            There was nothing inside; just a little room at the end of the hall, empty of everything save a radiator under the tall, rectangular window at the far end.  She looked back at Tim; he hadn’t budged an inch, nor taken a single step forward.  She couldn’t understand what he was afraid of…and then she recognized the room from the entries, and remembered.  
  
            She moved back towards Tim, speaking softly.  “This is where…where you and Alex - isn’t it?”  
  
            He nodded.  No wonder he didn’t want to set foot in there again, she thought.  The stillness of the place suddenly seemed suffocating, and she had the sudden, perhaps superstitious feeling that they were not alone; she glanced around again quickly, took another look down the hall to their left, but neither saw nor heard any signs of life.  
  
            “I don’t think anyone’s here.  We should keep looking,” she whispered, and Tim nodded again, and quickly turned on the spot and headed back downstairs.  
  
            Not until they were out of the building and walking in the warm sunlight and fresh air again did she venture to break the silence.  “It wasn’t your fault, you know,” she said gently.  
  
            Tim stiffened beside her, but he didn’t stop walking or say anything, so she kept going.  “He was trying to kill you.  He wasn’t going to stop.  It was self-defense.”  
  
            “I know,” he said curtly.  “Doesn’t mean I have to feel good about it.”  
  
            That was fair enough, Jessica thought, and she could sense from his tone of voice that he didn’t wish to discuss it, so she changed the subject.  “No sign of anyone yet.  Where else should we be looking?”  
            Tim exhaled, a long, defeated sound.  “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go there, but...well, this is it.”  
  
            He gestured at the building in front of them.  It looked much like the others; three stories, a row of tiny horizontal windows along the ground indicating a basement level.  A small wooden sign to the right of the entrance read “Benedict Hall.”  
  
            Again Jessica recognized it from the entries, and knew what awful memories were inside those walls.  She moved closer to Tim, took his hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze.  He glanced over at her, surprised, but he didn’t immediately pull away.  Together they strode up to the front entrance, peering through the dirty, scratched glass of the doors, and again when Tim tried the door it swung open invitingly.  
  
  
They quickly slipped inside, shutting the door behind them, and the ambient environmental sounds of the outside world cut off abruptly; inside, all was as silent as a dusty old tomb.  They were standing in a sort of small entrance foyer; inside the room immediately in front of them, and to the right, there was a staircase leading up and back towards the front of the building.  Glancing up, Jessica saw that the stairs wound their way up to the second and third floors in a straight column above them; she could see all the way up to the ceiling of the top floor.  But it was another door that had Tim’s attention, one underneath the staircase, directly in front of them and to the right as they came in.  And that door was opened to a dark and dirty flight of stairs that led down, into the basement.  
  
            Tim crept slowly downstairs, one step at a time, Jessica right behind him.  Compared to the unused, but relatively clean-looking upper floor, the basement was a wreck; the walls were peeling, and the floor was covered in bits and pieces of rubble that crunched underfoot with every step.  As they moved they kicked dust into the air, and Jessica had to hold her hand over her mouth and nose to keep herself from breathing it in and irritating her still-sensitive lungs.  Ahead of them was a long hallway.  It was dim, but not pitch black; there was light coming in through the little windows in the rooms off of the hall on either side.  
  
            They had hardly gone two steps when they heard a noise from one of those rooms; it sounded like a footstep; the same crunching noise of rubble underfoot.  They froze, listening, and then Tim crouched low, signaled for her to do likewise, and began creeping forwards in the direction of the sound, carefully choosing where to step so as to make as little noise as possible.  After what seemed like long, excruciating moments progressing in this manner, they reached the door to the room the sound had emanated from, and peered cautiously inside.  
  
            It was a tiny, grey room, devoid of any features of note, save the bright double window at the top of the far wall, and the dark figure crouched underneath it.  
  
            Jessica jumped and almost gasped out loud when her eyes picked out the figure from the shadows; a slender frame, dressed in jeans and a dark jacket, the hood up and their head down, obscuring their face.  Tim held out an arm defensively in front of her, tensing his body as if preparing for an attack.  
  
            But the figure merely stood and slowly raised their arms, lowering their hood and revealing a pale face that Jessica had only seen in videos and forgotten memories: scruffy brown hair and dark bags under large, dim green eyes.  
  
            “Hello, Jessica.  Tim.” Jay said.  “Thank you for coming.”


	9. Resurrection

Tim couldn’t think.  His brain was unable to process the information that his eyes were sending it, because doing so would mean accepting the impossible: that Jay was here, in front of him, alive.  Shock held him fixed to the spot, unable to move or to speak, as a mixture of sudden hope and stunned confusion swept over him like a suffocating tidal wave.  
  
            It was Jessica who spoke first, as he choked on his emotions.  “Jay?!”  
  
            “It’s good to see you, Jessica,” Jay said, his tone far too conversational.  “You look…well.”  
  
            “It was you?  You’re the one who made those videos?” she asked him.  “Who was there yesterday in Rosswood?”  
  
            He nodded.  “I’m glad you watched the entries like I told you to.  I wanted you to remember me.  Or at least who I was.  Otherwise you’d be even more confused right now than Tim here.”  
  
            Jay gestured at Tim, and something about being addressed directly snapped him out of his shock enough to respond, his voice quiet with awed disbelief.  “How?  How are you here?  I thought -”  
  
            “You thought I was dead,” Jay cut him off.  “You were wrong.  It happens.”  
  
            He turned back to Jessica.  “I thought you were dead for a while.  I looked for you, though.  I never stopped hoping.  Imagine my surprise when I finally learned the truth.”  
  
            There was an edge to his voice that Tim was not accustomed to hearing there, a harshness that didn’t suit him.  He’d heard that tone before, but not from Jay; even when they’d fought, Jay had never sounded quite like this…  
  
            “You want to watch out for this one,” Jay told Jessica, nodding his head at Tim.  “He’s a liar.  All he does is lie.  To his friends, to my viewers, to himself…”  
  
            “What are you talking about?” Tim demanded.  
  
            “Don’t worry, Tim.  Everything is fine, isn’t it?” Jay turned back to him, voice tinged with vicious coldness.  “Except I don’t think that’s quite true.  Oh, maybe for you it was.  You got what you wanted.  A way out.  All it cost you was a bit of blood on your hands.  But me?  You lied to me, you used me, and all I got for my trouble was a bullet in the gut.”  
  
            He pulled up his jacket and the green fabric of his shirt underneath, revealing a small, reddish hole in his stomach; the bullet wound had stopped bleeding, but it looked like it had never healed, never scarred over, but had instead remained fixed in time, as if brand new.  
  
            Tim stared in shock.  He had imagined Jay returning a hundred times.  Imagined what he would say to Jay if he found him alive.  He had never imagined it like this.  
  
            “Jay, I…I never meant for you to get shot, of _course_ I didn’t!  I never meant for anything to happen to you.  I tried to keep you safe!”  
  
            “You mean you tied me up and left me behind.” Jay’s eyes flashed accusingly.  “I remember that part, too.”  
  
            “How…how did you even survive?” Tim stammered.  “I looked for you here, but you were gone.  The tape on the camera showed you being – being taken, by that thing.  And I saw your body, when it was transporting me around everywhere, it showed you to me, you were dead!”  
  
            “No,” said Jay simply.  “I wasn’t.  I can understand the mistake; it usually takes dead people.  But it took me while I was still breathing.  You’ve been to the place where it takes people.  You’ve seen it.  I’d call it a kind of Hell, but…well, it’s not really meant to be an afterlife; it’s more like cold storage.  Even wounded, it can keep you alive there a long time, if it wants to.”  
  
            Tim’s eyes widened with horror as the implication sunk in.  “You – you were trapped there, alive, this whole time?”  
  
            Jay stared at him coolly, the ghost of a humorless smile on his face.  “Oh, I wasn’t conscious the whole time.  It was like being in a coma.  Except occasionally it would wake me up for a bit.  I’m not sure why, but I have a theory: maybe the brain doesn’t atrophy as fast if it gets some exercise now and then.  I guess it wanted to keep me fresh.”  
  
            Tim’s stomach lurched.  This was wrong, this was all wrong.  
  
            “Oh my god, Jay –”Jessica began, but he turned on her with an icy glare.  
  
            “Spare me your pity, Jessica,” he spat.  “You don’t even remember me.  We’re strangers.  That’s all we’ve ever been.”  
  
            She winced and took a step away from him, moving closer to Tim; he put his arm defensively in front of her.  
  
            “Then one day,” Jay continued, “I woke up here.  Right here, in this room, as if I’d never left.  Except that I wasn’t dying anymore; like my body had just…paused.  No blood, no pain, just a hole where that bullet went in, and no exit wound either.  Maybe it’s still inside me.  I can’t really tell.  I think I’d feel it, but I don’t really…I don’t feel much of anything now.”  
  
            As he listened, Tim noticed, even in the dim light of that dusty basement room, how pallid Jay looked; a thin shadow of himself, his face ashen, like his body had never replenished the blood that he’d lost.  
  
            “And then when I watched the entries and learned what had happened,” Jay went on, “and how long it had been, my first thought was that I had to find you, except I didn’t know where you’d gone.  But I found Jessica.  And then I knew how to get your attention.  And sure enough, here you are.”  
  
            “Why hide your identity?” Tim asked.  “Why not let me know it was you?  You didn’t need to go to all that trouble, I would have come, you know I would have come right away if I had known you were alive.”  
  
            “Would you have?” Jay said pointedly.  “Are you sure?  You were never the type to jump headfirst into things; always making plans, taking precautions.  Besides, then Jessica wouldn’t have gotten to meet me.”  He smiled at her, without warmth.  “And you came so quickly, for her.  So eager to help your friend.”  
  
            “Rosswood Park,” Jessica interjected.  “How did I get there?  That was you, too?”  
  
            Jay grinned, and the sight made her skin crawl.  “Thought you were safe because you locked the house up tight?  Didn’t the entries teach you anything?  Some things you can’t keep out with a locked door.”  
  
            Comprehension and horror alike dawned on Jessica’s face.  “That…that faceless thing brought me to Rosswood?”  
  
            “Didn’t you notice it in the video I filmed, the one outside your apartment?” Jay asked.  “Did Tim forget to mention that part, too?  Oh, Jess.  It’s had its eye on you for a long time.  Well, maybe that’s not the right expression.”  He chuckled lightly at his joke, frowning when he was met only with horrified stares by Tim and Jessica.  “Oh, don’t worry, Jessica” he said, dismissively.  “I watched over you, in the tunnel while you slept; I wasn’t going to just leave you there unattended.  I wanted Tim to find you, it just couldn’t be too easy.  I wanted to test his commitment to you.”  
  
            “Jesus, Jay,” Jessica protested.  “What’s wrong with you?  You wouldn’t have done that to me, you would have never –”  
  
            “You think that you know me?” Jay snarled, and his cold, smirking disdain abruptly fell away, revealing raw, ugly anger underneath.  “Why, because you watched my videos?  You don’t know the first thing about who I am, Jessica!”  
  
            “But I do.”  Tim’s voice was firm but compassionate, as he reached out to make one final appeal to a far-gone friend, just as he had done before, a year ago; one last attempt to reach the man trapped behind all that anger and pain.  “I know you better than anyone, Jay; or at least I did.  And she’s right.  The Jay I knew wouldn’t act like this.  Certainly not to your friends.”  
  
            “My friends…” Jay murmured.  “Well.  Then I guess that person really did die.”  
  
            Whatever they had once meant to him, there was no trace of that in his face or his voice any longer.  “That’s the irony of all this,” he said.  “You two went on with your lives, and I was robbed of mine.  You got to live, and I became a ghost.  You can’t possibly know what that feels like.  But you’re about to.”  
  
            He quickly reached his right hand into his jacket pocket, and Tim noticed, too late, the bulge there.  
  
            In that instant, Jessica remembered something.  Not a memory of the mind, but muscle memory, a knee-jerk reaction to danger, of the type burned into your body by fear and panic and instinct.  She had been here before…  
  
            The last time someone had pulled a gun on her, she had been lucky and he had hesitated.  This time she didn’t wait for luck.  She was fast when she had to be, and Jay’s focus was on Tim.  By the time Jay had pulled the weapon out of his pocket and was beginning to point it at Tim, she was on him.  She lunged forward, knocking the gun out of his hand with her left arm.  It fell to the floor and slid into the corner, as she pushed her right arm against Jay’s chest and slammed him back into the wall.  
  
            He grunted in pain, stunned; but only for a moment, and then he curled his newly-disarmed hand into a fist and smashed it into Jessica’s face, sending her sprawling to the dirty concrete floor.  
  
            Jay lunged towards the corner where the gun had fallen, but Tim intercepted him, tackling him to the ground.  For a moment they wrestled, Tim trying to hold Jay down as he flailed, throwing a flurry of punches at Tim’s face, fighting with a strength that belied his skinny frame.  Tim had just gotten Jay’s arms pinned when Jay managed to kick him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.  Suddenly Jay was the one dragging him to the ground, pinning Tim down, fingers wrapping tightly around Tim’s neck, choking him.  His head spun, he couldn’t breathe, there was no air in his lungs…  
  
            His vision began to blur and darken, but in the corner of his eye he saw a shape rising up off of the floor.  And then a moment later Jessica came barreling in to the rescue, knocking Jay off him, slamming Jay’s head against the hard concrete.   Jay lay there, stunned, as Tim staggered to his knees, gasping for air.  
  
            “Are you alright?!”  Jessica’s concerned voice sounded far away.  He staggered over to her, gesturing at Jay’s prone form and wheezing “Hold…his arms.”  
  
            She nodded, grasping Jay’s wrists and holding them tightly down against the floor.  He started to stir, but Tim was on top of him before he could fight back, pinning Jay’s arms to the ground with his knees.  He fished around in his own jacket pocket, and pulled out his own weapon.  _This had better work…  
_  
            He unscrewed the lid, shook a few pills into the palm of his hand, and then wrapped the other hand around Jay’s throat as Jay thrashed and struggled.  
  
            “Tim!” Jessica shouted, but she needn’t be alarmed; he only needed Jay to open his mouth.  
  
            And he did, after a moment, a big long gasp, and Tim seized the opportunity, shoving the pills in and clamping his hand over Jay’s mouth.  
  
            For a moment he was afraid that Jay would choke on them, but no; he swallowed, gulping down the medication.  Tim and Jessica continued to hold him down, but the meds were fast-acting, and after a minute his struggles subsided.   
  
            Only when he saw the fierce anger leave Jay’s face, replaced with a look of guilt and horror, did Tim move off of him and allow him to sit up.  
  
            Jay’s eyes were welling up with tears; he looked shocked and pained, glancing back and forth from Tim to Jessica.  “Oh my god…Tim.  Jessica!  Oh my god, I almost killed you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!  What have I _done_?”  
  
            His voice broke on the last word, a high-pitched note of remorse, a pitiful and wrenching sound, and yet a vast relief to their ears; the anger had left him.  He was himself again.  
  
            Tim gently wrapped his arms around his friend’s shaking body, and held Jay’s head to his chest, and whispered “It’s okay, Jay, you’re here, you’re back now.  I forgive you.”  
  
            They stayed that way for a long moment, Jay slowly calming down as Tim held him, Jessica standing to the side, watching them and letting the adrenaline rush gradually wear off.  She felt exhausted and relieved and awkward, as if she was intruding on a moment not meant for her.  
  
            When Jay had calmed his sobs enough to speak, he pulled loose, and sat there looking at both of them guiltily.  “I’m so sorry,” he said again.  “I’m so sorry I tried to hurt you.”  
  
            “It was that thing, wasn’t it?” said Jessica.  She was piecing it together, as she spoke.  “It got in your head, made you want to kill us.  Just like it turned Alex into a killer.”  
  
            Jay nodded weakly.  “I was so _angry_.  It felt justified a moment ago, but now…oh god, Tim, those things I said to you, I didn’t mean all that, please don’t think I hate you, I -”  
  
            Tim squeezed his hand.  Now that Jay was himself again, he couldn’t be angry.  This may not have been how he had pictured their reunion going, this mad, impossible version of a mad, impossible hope that he had never dared to let himself dream would come to pass, but now that it had, by god, he would take it.  
  
            “I didn’t think I would ever see you again, Jay.”  There were tears, now, in Tim’s eyes as well, but he made no pretense to hide them.  “I thought you were _dead_.”  
  
            “I thought I was, too,” said Jay, gazing at the wall by the door with a far-away look in his eyes.  He pulled up his shirt again, tracing the hole in his skin.  “I was right there, bleeding, and it was standing over me…”  
  
            He shuddered, closing his eyes.  “It had me for such a long time, Tim.  And it’s true what I said; I wasn’t awake for most of it.  But you lose all sense of time in there, in the dark, coming in and out of consciousness.  It could have been days, or decades, for all I knew.  And I was all alone…”  
  
            “Wait,” Jessica interrupted.  As happy as she was for Tim and for Jay, there was a desperate, grasping disappointment growing in her.  “Are you sure there was no one else still alive?  No one…from before?”  
  
            Jay looked puzzled, so she forced herself to say it.  “…Amy?”  
  
            “I’m sorry, Jessica,” he said gently, sympathetically.  “I saw Amy…I saw her body, in that place.  She’s gone.”  
  
            “No…no no no, if you came back, how do you know she can’t come back too?”  
  
            “She’s gone,” Jay repeated.  “Long gone.  I’m sorry, Jessica, but even if she could come back, you wouldn’t want her to.  Not like that.”  
  
            Jessica turned her back on them, covering her face with her hands, a strangled noise coming from her throat.  It wasn’t fair.  She thought about Amy; her smile, her voice, all the drunken laughter and sober heart-to-hearts they’d shared as roommates.  The last time she had seen Amy alive, and the twist of guilt in her stomach the first time she had caught herself thinking of Amy in the past tense.  She could feel a similar nauseous wave of grief rising inside her now.  She hated herself for resenting Jay this miracle, but it wasn’t _fair_ , why should he get a second chance and not Amy?  What made him so specia-  
  
            Oh.  
  
            Oh no.  
  
            Oh no no no no no.  
  
            “Jay!”  She wheeled around, startling them with her sudden intensity.  “Why _did_ you come back?  You said it had you, in that place, but then you just woke up here one day?  Why did it let you go?”  
            He swallowed, considering the question for a moment. “I - I guess it wanted me to – to kill you.  It was using Alex, before, but Tim ki – he died, and you and Tim were the only ones left, the only loose ends, and Tim went away, far away where it couldn’t find him…”  
  
            “It always wanted me,” said Tim grimly.  “But I kept it at bay, I learned how to block it out and protect myself from it.”  
  
            He held up the bottle of pills to illustrate his point, noting to himself, as he did so, how few were left now.  
  
            “Okay,” said Jessica hurriedly.  There was a sense of alarm building in her, a throbbing pain emerging in her head.  “So its whole big plan was to get you to kill us for it.  But that didn’t work.  You - it, just failed.  So what happens now?”  
  
            Tim looked at Jay, saw the dawning fear in his eyes, and suddenly, as if on cue, the light drained from the room.  For a moment it was as if the mid-day sun that had been shining so brightly when they had entered the building, no more than 15 minutes ago, had merely gone behind a cloud.  But then the sunlight through the window continued to fade, impossibly fast, until all light was gone; the sun had gone out and both inside and outside it was black as night.  
  
            “Run,” said Tim, and together the three of them scrambled to their feet, feeling their way out the door, letting their memory guide them as they ran through the darkness towards the stairs at the end of the hall.  
  
            In an instant, everything changed.  There was a sharp cracking noise in Tim’s mind and a rush of debilitating static, a furious assault on his brain that drove him down to his hands and knees.  His nose was bleeding, he was sure his head would explode, and at the end of the hallway, by the stairs, a tall, dark figure loomed, its outline visible even in the blackness, darker than the absence of light, as Jay and Jessica lay convulsing on the floor beside him, and reality distorted, flickered, and went out.


	10. Operator

Jessica’s brain was on fire.  The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced, as if every migraine she’d ever had was exploding through her head simultaneously.  She couldn’t move; her body was twitching of its own accord, muscles spasming, but her motor control was temporarily lost in the waves of pain.  She was dimly aware of Jay on the ground next to her, but she could no longer tell where they were.  She could barely even see; her vision was a blur of light as her brain pulsed with agony.  She didn’t care what happened to her, she didn’t care if she lived or died, so long as the pain stopped…  
  
            And then her eyes rolled back in her head and what little she could see of her surroundings was subsumed by a wave of darkness, and she felt herself falling, endlessly, through a weightless nothingness.  


She awoke into darkness.  The pain in her head had gone, though it had left her feeling weak and shaken.  She couldn’t see.  She panicked, thinking at first that she had gone blind; she groped around on the ground beside her, and felt moss and leaves and twigs.  Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she perceived a faint light, though she couldn’t determine its source, illuminating her surroundings; trees loomed up in the gloom like unnaturally bent and jagged shadows.  It was as cold as the darkest winter’s night, and her breath clouded in the freezing air as she shivered. There was no wind, no movement of branch or animal, no sound whatsoever; all was still, dark and lifeless.  She was in a forest, and the forest was a painting, detailed and yet unreal, an uncanny facsimile of nature, stasis-locked and eternal.  
  
            Jay was lying on the ground nearby, unmoving, and she hurried over to his side and pushed at him, trying to rouse him.  
  
            “Jay!”  
  
            He didn’t move, and Jessica felt panic rising in her as she shook him.  
  
            “Jay, wake _up_!”  
  
            She stopped, staring out into the dark and silent trees, her mind racing.  She couldn’t just leave Jay here, but she couldn’t stay put either; even in its absence, she could feel the dark presence of the being that ruled this forest bearing down on her like a weight, and she was certain that it would come for her, if she stayed there.  
  
            She was close to despairing when she heard a cough, and looked down to see Jay stirring, holding his head and grimacing in pain.  
  
            “Jay!  Oh my god, are you alright?”  
  
            “J-Jessica?” He groaned, looking around with a frightened expression as he took in their surroundings.  “Oh no.  Oh no no no no, _not here, not again_!”  
  
            “Jay!” She gripped him by the shoulders tightly, forcing him to make eye contact.  “Look at me!  We can’t stay here, we need to find Tim!”  
  
            He shook his head, defeated.  “It’s too late…”  
  
            “Don’t say that!  Come on, you’ve been here before, where do we go?”  
  
            “There’s nowhere _to_ go, Jessica, except where it wants you to go!  Don’t you understand?  We’re not in the real world anymore!”  He gestured into the eerie darkness around them.  “We’re in its territory now.  There’s no way out.”  
  
            “I don’t believe that,” she said stubbornly.  She felt a determination inside herself that she hadn’t realized was there flaring up in response to Jay’s frustrating despair.  “I don’t accept that.  There has to be a way out, and we’re going to find it.  But first we have to find Tim.”  
  
            He looked up at her, his expression torn between pity and admiration, but he didn’t speak or move.  
  
            “Whatever, Jay!  You can stay here and be useless if you want, but I’m going to at least try and do _something_ to get us out of this!”  She turned her back on him and began to walk away.  
  
            She had only gone a few steps when she heard him scrambling to his feet behind her, and she allowed herself a quick, satisfied half-smile.  
  
            “Jessica!  Wait!”  
  
            She turned around again to face him; he was standing there looking sheepish.  
  
            “Coming?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.  
  
            “I - I mean,” he stammered.  “I’m not going to let you just go off on your own.”  
  
            “Well come on, then” she said, more kindly, taking his hand in hers and giving it a reassuring squeeze.  “Let’s get out of here.”  
  


Tim was drowning.  He was submerged in a sea of static, an endless humming fuzz that filled his lungs like water and pierced through his clothes and his flesh and his bones like a cold electric current.  He struggled, thrashing his limbs, but there was nowhere to go, nothing around him but the sparkling, tingling void of semi-solid noise.  
  
            And then his head broke through an unmarked surface, and he could see above him a room, as if looking down from the ceiling.  He recognized the small, crumbling confines, the walls blackened by fire, and then he was falling into it, deposited roughly onto the hard floor of the hospital room that had once been his.  He felt a great heat surrounding him; the room was on fire again (or perhaps for the first time, or perhaps forever).  He scrambled to his feet and out the door, taking off down the halls of the hospital as it burned and decayed and fell to pieces around him with every step.  
  
            He ran, on and on through a looping and shifting maze of rooms and hallways seemingly without end.  Just when he thought he might collapse, lungs and legs burning, he burst through a pair of rusted double doors at the end of a long hallway, and into a dark and empty void.  
  
            He came to an abrupt halt, confused, staring without vision at the darkness all around him.  Swinging around to look behind him at the doors he entered through, he found them gone; nothing remained of the world but deep, inky black.  He was still standing, and he could feel solid yet invisible ground under his feet.  He reached into his pocket, producing his bottle of pills.  Only about a dozen remained, and he took two, swallowing them carefully.  Then, disoriented and frightened, he did the only thing he could think to do: pick a direction in the dark and start walking.  
  
            He walked for what felt like a long time (though really, who could say in this place), until he began to wonder if this cold, empty nothingness would be the only world he would ever see again.  He did not, he knew, belong here.  It was not a world for human beings.  It was made for things without eyes.  
  
            And then he saw it: a pool of light, up ahead in the distance.  He ran towards it, and slowly it grew larger, until he was on top of it, and he could see the object that was lying there, illuminated in a circle of light like an invisible spotlight from above.  Tim’s stomach lurched.  
  
            Alex Kralie’s corpse lay before him, preserved as he had been in the moment of his death; clutching his neck, dead eyes wide and unfocused, his pale, bloodless face a frozen mask of pain.  His shirt was stained dark red, torn with little holes where Tim had stabbed the knife into his chest again and again…  
  
            Tim’s stomach rolled once more, and he turned away from the body to double over retching, fighting to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged.  He managed, with some difficulty, to avoid vomiting, but he did hack up some blood.  It hung there suspended on the invisible dark surface by his feet, illuminated by the nearby light, a splash of red in a sea of black.  
  
            Tim steadied himself before turning back to look at the body.  He half expected it to have moved, to be standing now, waiting for him to face it before it pounced.  It was almost a relief to see Alex still lying there, unmoving and accusatory.  
  
            He stared down at the corpse he had created, the initial shock replaced with a sad and guilty emptiness.  I’m sorry that you’re dead, he thought.  It didn’t have to end that way.  We had the same enemy.  We could have avoided bloodshed, if you hadn’t been too far gone to see it.  Maybe if we’d gotten to you sooner, we could have helped you.  And then you and Jay and everyone wouldn’t have died…  
  
            He stopped short, his memory correcting him.  In the obfuscating panic and confusion of his current situation he had almost forgotten: Jay hadn’t died at all.  And if Tim had been brought here, chances were that Jay and Jessica had been, too.  He needed to find them.  
  
            So thinking, he left Alex behind, in his past, and charged ahead blindly into his uncertain future.  
  


Jay and Jessica were running down dark and endless trails, through an ocean of trees that loomed above them threateningly.  They had only been walking for a few minutes after setting out when they had turned a corner and seen the tall, humanoid shape standing there.  They had felt it before they saw it, before their eyes picked it out from among the trees to which it bore such resemblance.  It had felt them, too, this creature that was neither man nor tree, and had turned its faceless head to face them, and Jay had been rooted to the spot, unable to break its eyeless gaze, until Jessica had forcibly pulled him away.  And then they had ran, sprinting aimlessly through the trees, sensing that no matter how much distance they thought they were putting between themselves and the thing in pursuit, it was never far behind them.  It was the King of this cold and desolate place, and they were merely flies trapped in its vast and deadly web.  
  
            Nonetheless they struggled onwards, racing ahead without a destination, until the trees broke suddenly, and they found themselves standing on nothing, as if the ground had suddenly ceased to exist, leaving behind only empty, unfinished darkness.  They stared out in shock at the black void around them, a night sky with neither moon nor stars.  It was a terrifying absence of existence, yet the forest behind them was no more inviting than this impossible space; they glanced back at it and could feel the tangible menace pulsing through its shadows.  And so, taking each other by the hand and briefly locking eyes, they came to a decision, and plunged ahead into the sprawling, empty night.  
  


Tim ran onwards through the dark, until he saw something else looming up ahead.  He slowed down as he recognized it.  It was the tunnel from Rosswood Park, but divorced from its surroundings, a solitary object floating in the void.  From outside it appeared to be its normal size, but when he gazed inside it he saw that it was far longer than its real-life equivalent; he could see the curved, ridged metal walls stretching out into the distance.  He didn’t want to enter the tunnel; he could feel his mind and body rejecting it, telling him to turn and flee, to go somewhere, anywhere else.  But there was nowhere else to go; there were no other paths.  He knew that he was unlikely to find any safe haven no matter where he went in this place, and at least the tunnel was _something_.  Something in this dark absence that was tangible, that he could see and touch.  And so he pressed on, walking into the endless tunnel to see where, if anywhere, it led.  
  


After a long time spent fleeing through the empty dark, Jay and Jessica, too, came upon the mouth of the tunnel.  Jay froze in horror, refusing, or perhaps unable, to enter it of his own accord.  Jessica noticed his hand was pressed tightly against his stomach, clutching the spot where his unnatural bullet wound lay.  She stopped, pulling on his arm.  “Come on, Jay,” she urged.  “We’ve got no choice.  We can’t stay here, and we can’t go back.  We have to keep moving.”  
  
            Jay said nothing, but he looked at her and nodded slowly, as if summoning up what courage he could muster, and then together they ventured inside.  
  
            They walked hand in hand for a long time through the claustrophobic passageway, until the path ahead and the path behind looked equidistant to their eyes.  Neither of them made any move to touch the walls, fearing to test the structural integrity of this strange and impossible geography.  Jay kept his head down, walking quickly and breathing quicker, as if trying to suppress a growing panic.  Jessica was no less apprehensive, but she kept the pace steady and her head up and alert, determined to put on a brave face and carry the both of them through their ordeal.  
  
            After a while, they saw movement ahead at the far end of their vision, and recognized it as a figure walking towards them, getting slowly larger.  They froze, uncertain what to do, but their fear passed quickly; Jessica recognized the shape and called out its name.  
  
            “Tim!”  
  
            Tim broke out into a run, and a few seconds later he had reached them.  He embraced them tightly, first Jay and then Jessica.  
  
            “Thank god,” he said.  “Thought I’d lost you two for a while there.”  
  
            “We were looking for you, too,” Jay said, and while he was still visibly frightened, Jessica noticed that he already seemed a little less tense now that Tim was with them again.  
  
            “Now that we’re all together,” she said, wasting no time, “we need to do something.  We can’t just keep stumbling around at random like this.  We need a plan.”  
  
            Tim and Jay glanced at each other, and then at her.  “Any suggestions?”  
  
            “We’re the prey in this place,” she reasoned, an idea beginning to form in her mind. “And that thing is the predator hunting us.  And when you’re prey, there’s only ever two options: fight or flight.  We’ve been doing a lot of running, you guys.  Maybe it’s time to make a stand.”  
  
            Jay stared at her like she was crazy.  “How?  We can’t just fight it, Jessica.”  
  
            “Why not?” she asked.  “What’s it gonna do?  Can it hurt us?  Like directly, physically hurt us?”  
  
            “Yes – I mean, no,” sputtered Jay, “it doesn’t hit you or - or cut you or anything, but it can attack your mind, it can make you sick, you know what it can do, you’ve felt it…”  
  
            “But you can defend yourself,” Tim interjected.  He was holding up the pill bottle.  “I was saying so earlier, remember?  These will help dampen its effects on your head, like a shield for your brain.  Jessica’s right; I’ve stood up to it before, Jay, remember?  Entry #72, when we were at Alex’s old house, looking around, and it ambushed us.  It did a number on you, but I stood up to it and I made it go away.”  
  
            Jay looked unconvinced.  “But…but it’s stronger here, we’re in its territory, it still has the advantage.”  
  
            “We have to try,” Jessica insisted.  “Look, this thing’s not a fighter, it’s a manipulator.  It gets in your head.  It manipulated you, Jay, and Alex too.  It gives you ideas, doesn’t it?  Makes you do what it wants, and makes you think that it’s your own idea and that you’re doing the right thing.  So what happens if you know its tricks, if you refuse to be manipulated?  What power does it have over you then?”  
  
            Even as she spoke, they felt it; the static in their brains, the goose bumps along their arms, the charge in the air that heralded its coming.  
  
            “Only one way to find out, I guess,” said Tim, hastily pouring out the remaining pills into his hand and distributing some to Jay and Jessica; three for each of them.  
  
            She looked at the three little pills in her hand, so tiny a thing to lay all their hopes upon.  “Will this be enough?”  
  
            “It had better be,” Tim said darkly, and together the three of them swallowed the medication and braced themselves for the oncoming storm.  
  
            With a **crack** like thunder it split the air as it appeared, looming up above them in the tunnel, so tall that its back was bent to fit it under the ceiling; a hunched, malevolent monstrosity, its pale, faceless head extended down towards them.  
  
            All three of them felt a throbbing in their skulls, but lessened somewhat in intensity, a fraction of what they had felt not long ago when it had ambushed them inside Benedict Hall.  They knew that its rage (if indeed it felt such emotions) must be terrible, for it seemed to grow larger before them, its arms elongating and pressing against the tunnel walls, its head slowly moving closer and closer to where they stood; yet they did not run.  They stood their ground, hand in hand, a little human wall of defiance against the incomprehensible.  
  
            A thought came to Tim, floating into the forefront of his mind, unasked for:  He had screwed up Jessica’s life, forever, by dragging her into this shit.  He should have known better.  He didn’t have room in his life for attachments.  This was where people who got close to him ended up.  Even if they made it out of this alive, he had doomed her to a life of stress and fear, of constantly looking over her shoulder, of never being safe and happy.  But there was still time to save her.  She would be better off if she was free of all of this.  He glanced over at her, facing the horror before them with frightened determination.  He looked at his big hand, rough and strong and irreversibly stained with blood, grasping her small hand tightly.  It would be so easy to wrap his hands around her fragile neck and squeeze, until her eyes bugged out and her face turned blue and she ceased to struggle.  He knew he was capable of killing, and this time, it would be out of mercy.  She would thank him, if she knew what he was sparing her from…  
  
            He was about to move to do it when he recognized the terrible insanity of the idea, and from whence it came, and he drove the thought from his mind and stood firm.  
  
            Jay noticed a rock by the tunnel wall, a big, heavy rock, and he contemplated picking it up and smashing it into Tim’s head.  He would never see it coming, he’d go down in an instant, and then it would only take one more heavy blow to finish the job.  And after all, didn’t Jay hate him for what he’d done, for how Tim had lied to him and left him?  There was still a chance to get his revenge…  
  
            His muscles tensed, preparing to break ranks and grab the rock off the ground, before he caught himself and dispelled the thought, horrified.  He would not be used again, he thought defiantly.  
  
            Jessica felt Jay’s hand in hers, and she thought about Amy, about how unfair it was that Amy never got a second chance at life like Jay, and about how she might not be here in this horrible life or death situation at all, if Jay hadn’t dragged her into harm’s way so many years ago.  And she thought about how satisfying it would be to plunge her fingers into his eyes, to drag him down screaming to the ground and beat him bloody with her bare fists, to make him pay for what he had done to all their lives.  
  
            And then she shuddered, aghast, recognizing the insidious subversion of her nature for what it was, and holding fast against it.  
  
            Their foe beat at them with wave after wave of mental violence, but they did not fall.  They drew strength from one another, grasping each other’s hands so tightly that their knuckles turned white, and they stood, heads pounding and noses bleeding, staring down their nightmares.  
  
            Finally, after what felt like hours, the creature reared back, diminishing in stature, as the painful static-like charge running through their bodies and minds reached a frustrated crescendo.  And then, with a rushing sensation like a strong wind against their ears, and a flash of crackling distortion the filled their vision, reality shifted around them; they were plunged into darkness that swept over them like a wave, and they were falling once more through a weightless hole between worlds, falling and falling without end, until they were roughly deposited onto the hard, dirty, wonderfully real ground.


	11. Ghosts

Jessica stirred, groaning.  She opened her eyes, taking in the surroundings.  For a moment she thought nothing had changed, because at first glance they were still exactly where they had been a minute ago: in the tunnel in Rosswood Park.  And yet on closer inspection, she could tell from the sunlight streaming in through the tunnel’s mouth and the warm June air that although the setting was the same, their location had changed; they were back, finally, in their own world.  The monster was gone; it had released them.  They were free.  They had survived.  
  
            I can’t believe that worked, Jessica thought.  In the corner of her eye she glimpsed movement, and looked over to see Tim pushing himself off the ground, sitting up to look at her in stunned relief.  
  
            “We did it,” he said, as if he could scarcely believe it either.  
  
            She grinned.  “We did.”  
  
            Her smile quickly retracted when she saw Tim’s eyes move past her, looking behind her, and his face grow pale.  She whipped her head around, following the path of his gaze.  
  
            Jay was sitting propped against the tunnel wall, eyes unfocused, breathing shallowly as he clutched his stomach.  A red stain was slowly spreading across his shirt.  
  
            In an instant, Tim and Jessica scrambled to his side, Tim taking his hand and shouting “Jay!  Jay, look at me!” while Jessica delicately lifted up his shirt.  She gasped.  Jay’s old bullet wound had begun to bleed; a rapid, steady flow, as if the wound was freshly made.  His face contorted with pain with every little movement or shift of his body.  
  
            “Jay, what’s happening?” she asked in horror, looking at him with wide eyes.  
  
            “Hhhhhh,” he groaned.  “I - I guess…it decided…to put me back the way it found me.”  
  
            He was sweating and his face was pale; his breathing sounded pained and labored.  
  
            “Jessica, help me lift him!” Tim shouted.  She looked at him, taking in the panicked look in his eyes and the hysterical edge to his voice, but hesitated to move.  
  
            “Jessica, come on!  Help me carry him, we have to move him, we have to get him help!”  
  
            “Tim…” Jay said weakly.  “Look around.  We’re in the middle of Rosswood.  I wouldn’t even make it out of the park.”  
  
            Tim made a strangled noise in the back of his throat; a sob attempting to claw its way out.  
  
            “It’s okay, Tim…” Jay continued, pausing to take a wheezing breath every few words.  “This means it…doesn’t want me anymore.  I’m…finally free.  And I’m…so tired, Tim.  I’m ready for this.  For real…this time.”  
  
            “Jay, no,” Tim said.  His voice was small and anguished, his eyes wet.  “You can’t give up!  You never give up!  You have to fight this, please!”  
  
            Jay opened his mouth to speak and started choking, leaning over to cough up bright red lumps of blood onto the dark brown earth.  
  
            “I can’t…run anymore,” he said, quieter than before, when he had caught his breath again.  “Just delaying…the inevitable.  This was set in motion a long…time ago.”  
  
            “Jay,” Tim whimpered, between the sobs that he was no longer trying, or able, to control.  “I can’t – I can’t do this again, I can’t lose you, not again, _please_ –”  
  
            “You’ll be…okay.  You were always…a survivor.  Not like me.”  
  
            Jessica sniffed sadly, trying and failing to hold back tears of her own, and Jay turned his head to look at her.  “Jessica…”  
  
            “Yes, Jay?” she said, leaning in closer and giving his free hand a squeeze.  
  
            “I’m…so sorry,” he breathed.  “I only ever…brought you pain.  I don’t deserve a favor, but…”  
  
            “No, no, Jay, it’s okay,” she said hurriedly.  “What is it?”  
  
            His eyes slowly moved to look at Tim, and then back to her.  “Take care of him for me…will you?”  
  
            She smiled sadly, fighting to keep her voice steady.  “Yeah, Jay.  Yeah, okay.  I will.  Promise.”  
  
            Jay smiled at her, moving his arm, and she released his hand.  He raised his arm and touched the side of Tim’s face, smiling gently.  “I’m glad I got…to see you again.  How many dead people…get that chance?”  
  
            Tim tried to smile, but his face was a mask of pain, and the sound he made, that might, under better circumstances, have been a laugh, was keening and terrible.  
  
            “This is…better,” said Jay, still smiling.  He was looking at Tim, but his eyes were unfocused, as if staring into a faraway memory.  “I’m…not alone…this time.”  
  
            And then his eyes dimmed and his head dropped back against the wall, the ghost of a last smile still imprinted on his face, and he moved no more.  
  
            They stayed there for a long while, Jessica crying softly and listening to Tim wail as he clung to Jay’s lifeless form, knowing that there was no force, earthly or otherwise, that could ever remove those sounds from her memory.  
  
  
  
                                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                            THREE MONTHS LATER  
  
There was a new-found crispness to the air, a light autumn breeze that had emerged as the summer slowly began to give way to fall.  Jessica could smell it as she waited by the car outside the motel room, and it made her smile.  Fall had always been her favorite time of year.  
  
            After a moment, Tim emerged from the motel’s front office, making his way towards her across the parking lot.  
  
            “Alright, we’re all checked out.  Ready to hit the road?”  
  
            “Uh huh.”  She opened the door and slipped inside the driver’s seat.  
  
            “It’s starting to get colder” she commented as Tim sat down next to her, buckling his seat belt.  
  
            “Yup.  That’ll happen.”  
  
            “Hey,” she said gently, looking at him.  “I know you’re used to moving around a lot.  But it’s been a while now, and I think it’s time we settled on a destination.  Someplace more long term, for the winter at least.”  
  
            “Yeah, I think you’re right, actually.”  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking out the window as Jessica slowly maneuvered the car backwards and headed out of the parking lot.  “Not here, though.”  
  
            “Yeah, no,” she said.  “Not here.”  
  
            “Any suggestions?  You know I’m not too particular.”  
  
            She thought for a moment, her eyes on the road ahead.  “West, I think.  A long ways west.”  
  
            “Fine by me,” Tim said.  “But let’s take our time getting there.  I’m not in a hurry.”  
  
            “No,” Jessica said softly.  “Me neither.”

            Behind her, many miles away, was a town of ghosts and memories, with little to offer her apart from a job she hadn’t enjoyed and an apartment that had been decorated mainly, until the last few months, with loneliness.  
  
            Behind her, somewhere, was a dark forest in another world, and a being that was waiting, patiently, for new prey to wander into its web.  
  
            Behind her, in a hand-dug grave in the soft earth by a stream in Rosswood Park, was a friend who was finally resting, she hoped, in peace.  
  
            Next to her, now, was a person she felt at ease around, whom she trusted, and had been entrusted with.  
  
            Ahead of her stretched a long highway; a map of branching roads and countless possibilities and an uncertain yet hopeful future for them both.  
  
            She glanced at Tim beside her, his eyes watching the ever-changing scenery outside, his thoughts lost in distant memories.  
  
            This time, she thought, will be better.  
  
            You’re not alone this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap on my fic! I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you so much for reading!!


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